Hydra

The development of the “Hydra” chair is the graduation project of the designer Jörg Höltje (Studio Hausen) from the University of the Arts in Berlin. It is also the result of an 18-month cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz, Germany.

Höltje’s aim was to design a chair whose form stemmed from observations of the natural forces and functions that give biological organisms their shape and then to create it using an innovative technological process called ‘hydroforming’.

Hydroforming is already used in the automobile industries as an economical way of shaping malleable metals and creating lightweight but structurally strong components and joints. After visiting the Fraunhofer Institute, Höltje realised that high-pressure tube hydroforming (IHU) could also facilitate the modelling of free geometric forms from sheet and tubular steel to create a chair with a ‘grown’ organic shape and the collaboration began then and there.

The hydroforming of steel tube works by laying a component filled with fluid in a mould and then altering its shape with a controlled build up of the internal fluid pressure. IHU technology has allowed Höltje to break with the dogma of the continuous diameter of steel tube components; to give the tube a landscape of contours and allow it to branch out. He has liberated the structural form of the tubular steel chair and for the first time created a version that looks like it has grown into shape rather than been bent into it. “The tubular steel chair has been a classic since the emergence of Modernism”, says Höltje, “now, a century later, hydroforming allows us to take the next step and liberate the steel tube itself from its formal straightjacket”.

The Hydra chair reflects both the technical and aesthetic potential made possible by IHU technology and thanks to the close collaboration with the Fraunhofer IWU, Höltje has pioneered a whole new world of potential applications for the furniture industry.

several knot-point models in plastic