The Colo armchair was influenced by designer Pedro Avila’s childhood in Brasília, a city entirely built under the modernist influence of Oscar Niemeyer, located in central Brazil, far from the beaches. In the 1990s, the main leisure activity there was spending time at swimming clubs.
“In these clubs, all the outdoor furniture at the time was molded in fiberglass,” Pedro says. “As kids, we used to pour water over the lounge chairs and slide down their organic shapes. I grew up with a deep fondness for this type of furniture, seeing it almost as a playground. Today, those pieces no longer exist—they’ve been replaced by plastic, wood, or more contemporary materials. I felt the urge to revisit that design and bring it into the present, reinterpreting it through a more sculptural and futuristic perspective.”
The collection Colo was born from, called π (pi), all take on shapes originally modeled in clay starting from a sphere, with the guiding principle of using circular forms. Pedro began by sculpting a miniature clay model, and scaling it up by manually carving it in styrofoam to help refine its ergonomics for comfort.
“From these soft, aerodynamic shapes, I created forms that reference different parts of the human body—elbows, knees, folds of skin, and even orifices,” Pedro says. “Still drawing from childhood memories, I realized that the way the chair’s legs extended forward and outward reminded me of sitting on my parents’ lap—hence the name Colo, which means ‘lap’ in Portuguese.
A version of this article originally appeared in “Nice Chairs” in Sixtysix Issue 14.
