Hee Welling is a Danish furniture designer who founded his own studio in Copenhagen in 2003. Welling has received a number of design awards, including the Bo Bedre Award (Denmark), Good Design Award (USA) and has been nominated as the Danish designer of the year in both 2013 and 2014.
Welling is the son of a cabinetmaker, and his fascination with production techniques, materials and machinery was fired as a child. He went on to study at The University of Art and Design in Helsinki, and received his master’s degree in furniture design from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (where he is also now a design tutor).
His design ethos is centered around the idea of creating technically accomplished products that can reach a wide audience. His work is characterized by a great sense of proportion and quietly elegant looks.
The idea for the Hee chairs derives from an ambition to make an eco-friendly chair where the materials are easily recyclable. Creating a chair from one single material has the environmental advantages of saving transportation between different production sites and simplifying the recycling of materials. The philosophy was taking an archetypical chair – and perfecting it in every single detail by lifting the design up a level, simplifying it and improving the usability. The starting point was to make a cool and basic chair that would fit most locations – modern but not so typical of the period, that it does not have a long life. There is nothing superfluous or ornamented about the chair and nothing can be removed without losing the function. The chair has a playful expression but does not let the design compromise its purpose. The mentality of using-and-throwing-away is not in harmony with the environmental ambition. Balancing the construction was essential – as was combining aesthetics and function by finding exactly the right thickness of the metal wire. The chair is made from 11 mm metal wire and the form refers to a sketch - a pencil drawing in three dimensions. The Hee chair comes as a lounge chair, a dining chair and a barstool. It is, among other places being used in the new Oslo Opera and the Australian parliament. The chair is stackable and electroplated prior to the powder coating, and they withstand weather throughout the year making it suitable for an outdoor set up.
Size Width 41 cm, Height 78 cm, Seat height 46 cm Material Powder coated steel rod Sold by the pair.
