FOCUSCross chair 
TAKT
Flatpack furniture has a bit of a bad rap, synonymous with fast furniture, made with quantity in mind rather than quality. But flatpack has a much richer history than the fast and furious Billy bookshelf, one of which is estimated to sell every five seconds. 

It stretches back to the 1890s when Sears Roebuck started to sell flatpack houses. But even before that, in 1859, Michael Thonet’s no.14 chair could be disassembled for shipping into six pieces of steambent wood, ten screws, and two nuts. In 1956, IKEA launched the ready-to-assemble Lövet table (a Eureka moment after its designer sawed the legs off, all three of them, to fit it into his car) and the idea of buying a piece of furniture that came fully formed suddenly seemed so old-fashioned. 

For TAKT, the Danish furniture company rethinking furniture production ‘for the mutual benefit of people and planet’, flatpack furniture has nothing to do with a reduction in quality and everything to do with making it easier and more efficiently transported. Take the Cross Chair, designed by British design duo PearsonLloyd out of FSC certified oak and plywood. Six flatpack chairs take up the same amount of space as one assembled chair, drastically reducing fuel consumption and Co2 which makes it not just efficient, but imperative.

Each chair comes in a box in just four parts. The Cross frame which forms the legs and support slot together beautifully, and the act of building your chair – a simple process of turning a few screws with an Allen key – will make you appreciate how beautifully crafted these chairs are. And because TAKT sells directly to the consumer, products are priced in a way that is fair and transparent, cutting out the mark-ups usually applied by retailers. The entire production process is eco-certified, and for every chair you buy, TAKT will plant a tree.

Cross chair, £229; taktcph.com
WORDS TAMSIN BLANCHARD | PHOTOGRAPH JACK WILSON