The Autoban Butterfly Chair: An Istanbul Studio's Timber Seat

The Autoban Butterfly Chair is a dining and desk chair designed by Istanbul studio Autoban — Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Çağlar — and made by De La Espada in Portugal. Its two-piece solid-timber backrest curves around the seat in a shape retailers consistently describe as a butterfly's wings; Objena carries it in walnut, oak or ash, upholstered to order, at AUD 2,990.

An Istanbul studio's furniture debut

Autoban was founded in Istanbul in 2003 by Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Çağlar, both graduates of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Academy. The studio showed its first furniture collection in 2004 — the same year Wallpaper* magazine named it a Best Newcomer — and opened its own gallery in Istanbul in 2006. Its manufacturing partnership with De La Espada, the Portuguese workshop that turns the Butterfly Chair's design into an actual object, began the year after, in 2007. Autoban has since grown into a much larger practice spanning architecture, interiors and product design, with hospitality work as far afield as the Maldives and Baku, but the furniture line — sold through more than fifty international retail points — is where the studio's name still travels furthest. The Butterfly Chair remains one of its most recognisable furniture pieces — simple enough to read in a single photograph, distinctive enough that retailers rarely need to name the designer for buyers to place it.

Two wings of solid timber

The construction is straightforward to describe and harder to execute well: a seat set low between two curved timber uprights that sweep back and up to form the backrest, upholstered across the seat and the inner face of the backrest in the buyer's choice of fabric or leather. De La Espada offers the frame in American black walnut, American white oak or European ash, each in a choice of finishes, and builds every chair to order rather than holding stock — a chair measuring roughly 50 cm wide, 55 cm deep and 79 cm high, with a seat height of about 44 cm. Nothing about the frame is hidden behind upholstery; the timber does the visible work, the fabric or leather fills in behind it. De La Espada has since extended the same silhouette into a bar-stool height, sold alongside the chair — Objena carries the dining/desk height only, the version the design was drawn for.

How a "brand studio" makes a chair like this

De La Espada doesn't design its own collection so much as manufacture other people's: it positions itself as a workshop for independent designers who keep creative control over their work while De La Espada handles the making and distribution — what one retailer describes as support for "the modern artisan" rather than a house style imposed from above. Autoban's Butterfly Chair sits in that catalogue the same way pieces by other designers do inside Objena's own De La Espada range — Neri & Hu's Capo Lounge Armchair, Manuel Aires Mateus's Chair One — each one a different studio's answer to the same brief: solid timber, visible joinery, nothing manufactured to look handmade when it isn't.

Objena carries the Butterfly Chair at AUD 2,990, made to order in walnut, oak or ash. The wider De La Espada story — the Portuguese workshop, the roster of designers it manufactures for, the thirty-year case for buying furniture built to outlast a renovation — is in the De La Espada chapter.

Three questions

What is the Autoban Butterfly Chair? It is a dining and desk chair designed by Istanbul studio Autoban — Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Çağlar — and manufactured by De La Espada in Portugal. Its solid-timber backrest curves around the seat in two pieces, a shape retailers describe as recalling a butterfly's wings. It comes in American black walnut, American white oak or European ash, upholstered in fabric or leather to order, and Objena carries it at AUD 2,990.

Who designed the Butterfly Chair, and when? Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Çağlar, who founded Autoban in Istanbul in 2003 after studying at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Academy. Autoban showed its first furniture collection in 2004, the same year Wallpaper* named it a Best Newcomer, and opened its own gallery in 2006. Its manufacturing partnership with De La Espada began the following year, in 2007.

What timber and finish options does the Butterfly Chair come in? The frame is offered in American black walnut, American white oak or European ash, each with a choice of finishes, and the seat and backrest are upholstered in the buyer's fabric or leather. Every chair is made to order in De La Espada's Portuguese workshop rather than held in stock.