Contemporary fireside chair ROUND D.154.5

fabricplywoodwith removable cover

The iconic Round D.154.5 designed by Gio Ponti has very modern shapes, almost out of this world, which had never been thought of before. The early 1950s marked a turning point in Gio Ponti’s furniture designs, towards highly innovative solutions linked to functional and essential shapes: the end of the Second World War, with the desire to restart and rebuild a modern world full of novelties, thus moving away from the past; the availability of innovative materials, which made it possible to conceive objects that were previously unfeasible. The Round project D.154.5 fully satisfied Ponti’s design mind-set of the period. The project name, Round D.154.5, comes from the rounded shape of the seat and backrests, also referred to as the ‘soap bar’. Characterized by avantgarde materials and technologies, such as the Vipla (a plastic material that resembles leather) for the upholstery, curved plywood to join the backrest and seat, and metal feet with non-slip tips that are easy to assemble. Round (D.154.5) is also referred to as ‘Otto Pezzi’ (Eight Pieces) in the Ponti/Fornaroli/Rosselli study. In fact, there are eight pieces that make up the chair: backrest, seat, two curved plywood elements and four legs, which screw into the seat to hold the whole thing together.