The Waiting Place

DESIGN MATTERS 03

A series of design stories from Chart Interiors, exploring the ideas, people and products behind the manufacturers we represent.

In this edition, we explore Leyform and how thoughtful seating design can shape the human experience of waiting — through comfort, dignity and a sense of belonging.

We design places for people to wait. But how often do we consider what they're waiting for?

We rarely know what someone is carrying when they enter a waiting room.

Anxiety about an appointment. The exhaustion of a difficult day. The uncertainty of what comes next.

For some, waiting is simply a pause between activities. For others, it can be one of the most vulnerable moments of their day.

Yet waiting is such a familiar part of life, and the spaces designed for it don't always reflect the people who use them.

So perhaps the question isn't simply where people should sit.

Perhaps it's how we can make them feel considered while they're there.

Noà by Leyform — creating a sense of personal space within shared environments.

Dignity by design

In a hospital in Monaco, Leyform was asked to consider something deceptively simple: how easily patients could sit down and stand up again.

For elderly patients and those experiencing mobility difficulties, the height of a seat can make a significant difference to their independence and comfort.

Working with its modular Ola seating system, Leyform introduced thicker seat padding and custom spacers to raise the overall seating height.

The adaptations were subtle, but their purpose was significant: to make an everyday movement easier for the people using the space.

Ola also offers different backrest heights and flexible configurations, allowing seating arrangements to respond to different environments and requirements.

Because dignity in design isn't always about making a grand statement. Sometimes it's about removing a small but very real difficulty from someone's day.

Ola by Leyform — modular seating with high and low backrest options. For the Monaco hospital project, Leyform also developed bespoke adjustments to seat height and padding to improve accessibility and comfort.

Ola by Leyform — modular configurations that respond to different spaces and architectural layouts.

The architecture of calm

A library asks something very different of its furniture.

Rather than simply accommodating people as they pass through, it invites them to stay. To read, reflect, concentrate or spend a little time away from the pace of everyday life.

At the Dammam Library in Saudi Arabia, Leyform's Lizzy seating and Gogo pouffes were selected in soft pastel tones, creating an inviting contrast with the surrounding architecture.

The furniture contributes to an environment where people can find their own way to occupy the space — whether settling into a chair with a book or gathering more informally.

It's a reminder that comfort isn't only physical. Colour, proportion and the arrangement of furniture all help shape how a space feels.

Sometimes the most welcoming spaces are those that give us permission to slow down.

Biblioteca Dammam, Saudi Arabia — Lizzy seating and Gogo pouffes by Leyform. Project: Milano International.

A little space of our own

In busy public environments, privacy isn't always about having a separate room.

Sometimes it's about creating a sense of personal space within a larger, shared setting.

Leyform's Noà collection explores this idea through what the manufacturer describes as a micro-architecture of privacy — upholstered forms that help define smaller, more sheltered spaces within an open interior.

Its design philosophy considers enclosure, acoustic protection and a sense of security, recognising that even in communal environments, people don't always want to feel exposed.

It's an interesting reminder that the experience of a space isn't determined by its size alone, but by how we feel within it.

Sometimes a little separation can make a shared space feel more welcoming.

Noà by Leyform — using modular seating to create smaller, more intimate settings within open, shared spaces. A thoughtful balance between connection and personal space.

Leyform's Around Box explores another dimension of personal space — creating a welcoming, home-from-home retreat within a shared environment.

With its high, softly upholstered sides and inviting proportions, it offers a cocoon-like sense of shelter from the activity around it. Somewhere to settle, gather your thoughts, read, catch up on work or simply enjoy a moment to yourself.

Thoughtful details, including a convenient surface and integrated power, bring everyday practicality into a setting that feels reassuringly domestic.

Because sometimes, feeling comfortable begins with feeling sheltered.

Around Box by Leyform — a softly upholstered, cocoon-like retreat offering comfort, personal space and everyday convenience within shared environments.

Designing for people, not just places

A hospital waiting area. A library. A shared public space.

Different environments, different expectations. But each asks something of the people who use it.

For architects and designers, the challenge goes beyond selecting furniture that fits a floor plan. It's about recognising the different ways people experience a space — and how even small design decisions can make those experiences better.

Accessibility, durability and practicality will always matter. But so do reassurance, comfort and the freedom to find a little space of our own.

Because the best spaces don't simply accommodate people. They make people feel understood.

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Discover more with Chart Interiors

Chart Interiors works with architects and designers to explore thoughtful seating solutions for healthcare, education and shared public environments.

Discover Leyform's collections, or talk to us about creating spaces that consider the people who use them.

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What happens when a room needs to change?

DESIGN MATTERS 02

A series of design stories from Chart Interiors, exploring the ideas, people and products behind the manufacturers we represent. In this edition, we turn the spotlight on LAMM.

We design buildings to last. But increasingly, the spaces within them need to do something rather different: adapt.

A lecture room becomes a collaborative workspace. A meeting space becomes a presentation room. A training environment may need to accommodate entirely different groups and ways of working from one hour to the next.

For architects and designers, that creates an interesting challenge.

How do you design for a use that might change before the building does?

At Chart Interiors, it’s one of the reasons we find LAMM’s approach to flexible spaces particularly compelling.

And one product provides a deceptively simple example.

LAMM Flexa Move mobile seating with writing tablets, designed by Dante Bonuccelli

FLEXA MOVE

Designed by Dante Bonuccelli, Flexa Move takes the familiar idea of an auditorium or conference chair and removes one of its most fundamental constraints: its fixed position.

Its self-supporting structure and four swivel wheels allow individual seats to be moved and spaces to be reconfigured quickly, while an optional fold-away writing tablet allows the chair to function as an individual workspace.

The idea is simple, but the implications are rather bigger.

Instead of designing a room around a permanent furniture layout, what if the furniture could respond to the room?

DESIGNING FOR CHANGE

Buildings are long-term investments. The way we use them is not.

Teaching methods evolve. Teams move between individual and collaborative work. Technology changes. And spaces designed for one purpose are increasingly expected to accommodate several.

For architects and designers, flexibility therefore becomes more than simply making furniture movable. It is about reducing the fixed elements that determine how, where and when a space can be used.

Flexa Move addresses one of those constraints by allowing the seating itself to move with the needs of the space

But what happens when the furniture can move — and the technology can’t?

Flexa Move Battery with integrated rechargeable power

FLEXA MOVE BATTERY

In 2026, LAMM took the idea of flexibility one step further.

Flexa Move Battery integrates LAMM's patented rechargeable power technology within the chair, allowing laptops, tablets and other devices to be powered without connecting the seating to a fixed electrical supply.

It removes another physical constraint from the room: the cable.

For learning, meeting and collaborative environments, that means furniture and technology can move together — allowing layouts to change without the availability of floor boxes or wall sockets dictating where people can work.

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True flexibility isn't simply about what can move. It's about what no longer needs to stay fixed.

DESIGNING FOR WHAT COMES NEXT

Designing for the future doesn't necessarily mean predicting exactly what comes next.

It can also mean building in enough adaptability to respond to it — new technology, different ways of working, changing teaching methods or simply a different group of people.

Flexa Move is one example of how a relatively small design decision can have a much wider effect on the way a space performs.

Because sometimes designing for the future means leaving room for change.

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Discover more with Chart Interiors

Chart Interiors represents a carefully selected portfolio of furniture manufacturers, connecting distinctive design with projects across the UK.

Explore the LAMM collection, or talk to us about flexible spaces for your next project

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Because good design lasts

DESIGN MATTERS 01

A series of design stories from Chart Interiors, exploring the ideas, people and products behind the manufacturers we represent. In this edition, we turn the spotlight on Anonima Castelli.

Anonima Castelli · Plia · Giancarlo Piretti

What makes a piece of furniture last?

Not simply survive, but remain relevant – still useful, still desirable and still capable of looking entirely at home decades after it was designed.

Few pieces demonstrate that better than Plia, designed by Giancarlo Piretti for Anonima Castelli in 1967.

Plia by Giancarlo Piretti for Anonima Castelli. Designed in 1967.

A simple idea. A difficult thing to achieve.

In 1967, Giancarlo Piretti designed a folding chair that did something rather clever. Plia took an object usually regarded as purely functional and turned it into a piece of considered industrial design.

At its heart was Piretti's ingenious three-disc joint: a single mechanism that allowed the seat, back and frame to fold together. The result was elegant, compact and remarkably simple to use.

But perhaps the more interesting part of the story is what happened next.

Plia didn't disappear when tastes changed. It became part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, sold in its millions, and remains in production today.

Almost sixty years later, the design still works.

Plia mechanism

Good design doesn't stand still.

Longevity doesn't mean freezing a product in time.

Over the decades, Plia has appeared in different materials, colours and finishes, while the clarity of Piretti's original idea has remained remarkably intact.

That's an important distinction. Design heritage is valuable, but only when it continues to have relevance.

A chair designed in 1967 still has to earn its place in a project in 2026 – through function, proportion, material choice and the way it responds to contemporary interiors.

The best designs don't simply belong to their period. They outlive it.

Plia in transparent polycarbonate – the original design reinterpreted for contemporary interiors.

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Discover more with Chart Interiors

Chart Interiors represents a carefully selected portfolio of furniture manufacturers, connecting distinctive design with projects across the UK.

Explore the Anonima Castelli collection or get in touch to discuss your next project.

EXPLORE THE COLLECTION →