The Vitra Belleville Armchair can be attractively combined in bustling bistro settings as well as sleekly modern galleries or diversely styled home environments. The chair is a technically sophisticated, consisting of two components; a structural plastic frame and a wooden seat shell. Tracing the calligraphic lines of the legs and back, the slender black frame supports a thin shell that tapers from the wide seat surface into a narrow backrest.
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, the Breton-born brothers, are the stars of European design and the most promising industrial designers to have emerged from France since Philippe Starck in the 1980s.
A combination of romanticism and functionality runs throughout both brothers’ work. Like all truly talented designers, the Bouroullecs have defined a distinctive visual style, which Jasper Morrison (one of the designers they most admire) described as “thoughtful and disciplined, with a real spirit and poetry”.
