FRAMA Rivet Chair: One Material, Honestly Joined

The FRAMA Rivet Chair is made from a single material — untreated aluminium sheet, 4mm thick — with no weld anywhere in it. Danish designer Jonas Trampedach laser-cuts the panels and joins them by hand with a traditional riveting technique, a method he developed specifically because welding aluminium at the angles the chair needed proved difficult to do cleanly. FRAMA has built it this way since putting the design into commercial production in 2016, and Objena carries it at AUD 3,680.

A workaround that became the design

Trampedach started developing the technique in 2011 at Statens Værksteder for Kunst — the National Workshops for Arts in Copenhagen — where designers get access to workshop tools and time to solve a problem by hand rather than in a factory brief. His problem was straightforward: aluminium sheet doesn't weld the way steel does, and the clean 90-degree joints he wanted between flat panels kept failing. Rather than change the material, he changed the joint. Riveting — driving a fastener through both sheets and hammering it flat by hand — let two flat aluminium planes meet at a right angle without heat, filler or a seam to grind smooth afterward. The rivets stayed visible instead of being hidden, and FRAMA built the whole chair around that decision rather than disguising it.

What the chair actually is

The finished chair is 80.5 cm high, 45.5 cm wide and 51 cm deep, with a 46 cm seat height, cut and cold-formed from 4mm aluminium sheet and assembled by hand — each rivet driven individually, which is also why FRAMA describes every chair as slightly different from the next. The aluminium itself is left raw: no powder coat, no anodising, no lacquer between the metal and the room it sits in. FRAMA is explicit that this is deliberate — "a celebration of the purity of aluminum, left untreated with the material's honesty in mind" — and that scratches, small colour variations and an evolving patina are part of what owning the chair looks like, not a defect to manage around.

Part of a series, not a one-off

The Rivet Chair sits inside FRAMA's wider Rivet Series, which Trampedach and FRAMA have expanded since the chair's 2016 launch — box tables, shelving, a typecase and a cart, all built on the same riveted-aluminium logic, with a glass-panelled addition to the range in 2024. Objena also carries two of its close relatives: the Rivet Box Table and the Rivet Shelf, both cut from the same 4mm untreated aluminium and joined the same way. Seen together, the three pieces read less like a matching furniture set and more like variations FRAMA has worked out on a single technique — the chair is simply the version that has to hold a body's weight while doing it.

Living with raw aluminium

Because the metal is untreated, care is mostly about what not to do: FRAMA recommends a soft cloth dampened with water or mild soap, no chemical cleaners, and drying the chair fully afterward so streaks don't sit in the seams around the rivets. The same rawness is what makes the chair usable outdoors — FRAMA states the aluminium will not rust or deteriorate in weather, which is unusual for a dining or desk chair and is a direct consequence of leaving it unfinished rather than a separate outdoor-rated version. A chair bought for a Sydney balcony and one bought for a study will end up looking different from each other within a year or two, on the same aluminium, for the same reason.

Objena carries the Rivet Chair at AUD 3,680, alongside the Rivet Box Table and Rivet Shelf from the same series. The wider FRAMA story — a furniture house working out of an 1878 Copenhagen pharmacy — is in the FRAMA chapter.

Three questions

What is the FRAMA Rivet Chair made of? A single material — untreated aluminium sheet, 4mm thick, laser-cut and cold-formed. Nothing is welded; the panels are joined by hand using a traditional riveting technique, and the aluminium is left raw rather than powder-coated or anodised, so it develops its own patina and small scratches over time.

Who designed the Rivet Chair, and why is it riveted instead of welded? Danish designer Jonas Trampedach, who began developing the technique in 2011 at Statens Værksteder for Kunst (the National Workshops for Arts) in Copenhagen. Welding aluminium sheet at the angles he needed proved difficult to do cleanly, so he worked out a hand-riveted 90-degree joint instead — a workaround that became the design's signature rather than a compromise. FRAMA put the chair into commercial production in 2016.

Can the Rivet Chair be used outdoors? Yes. FRAMA states the untreated aluminium will not rust or deteriorate outdoors — it is left raw specifically so weather and handling can mark it without damaging it. FRAMA recommends cleaning it with a soft cloth dampened in water or mild soap, avoiding chemical cleaners, and drying it thoroughly, taking care around the rivets and edges.