Alfi Chair: Jasper Morrison's Reclaimed-Material Everyday Seat

The Emeco Alfi Chair is a 2015 design by Jasper Morrison: a seat moulded from reclaimed polypropylene and wood fibre, set on legs hand-carved from solid ash. Morrison built the shape to read as ordinary rather than authored — the seat is 100% reclaimed post-industrial waste, and the chair carries no ornament beyond the shallow curve of its own back.

What the seat is actually made of

The composition is specific, not a general "recycled" claim: 92.5% reclaimed polypropylene combined with 7.5% wood fibre, moulded in Vermont, so the finished surface carries a faint speckled texture where the wood particles sit close to the skin — more visible in the lighter colourways than the dark ones. The legs are a separate material decision entirely: solid ash, hand-carved by an Amish supplier in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and finished natural or dark-stained rather than lacquered, so the grain stays legible under normal wear. Hive Modern, which stocks the chair in the United States, lists it as CLEAN AIR GOLD certified and shipped fully assembled — a low-emissions standard for the moulded seat, not a claim about the ash frame.

A brasserie chair, not a design statement

Morrison was invited to design for Emeco by the house's owner, Gregg Buchbinder, and went looking for a form that had already proved itself rather than inventing a new one. "I drew the shell shape remembering the classic cane café chairs you still see on Parisian pavements with rounded backs and flat seats," he has said of the brief. It is the same instinct behind his "Super Normal" design position — that an object earns its place through everyday usefulness, not through visibly trying to be new — and Alfi's rounded back and flat seat read closer to a bistro chair than to a design-fair centrepiece. The one detail that gives the design away as considered rather than found is an elliptical hole moulded through the seat shell, sized for a hand to grip — the kind of unglamorous utility a café needs when the same chairs get stacked and carried dozens of times in a service, not a decorative cutout.

The same year, a different material entirely

Morrison drew a second Emeco chair in 2015 alongside Alfi: the 1 Inch, a frame built from a single one-inch square of recycled aluminium tube, chosen, in his words, for "optimal strength-to-weight performance." Where Alfi solves the sustainability question with reclaimed plastic and ash, 1 Inch solves it in metal — Emeco's own name for the version built entirely in that aluminium is the 1 Inch All Aluminum Chair, and it sits in Objena's catalogue as Alfi's aluminium counterpart from the same designer and the same year.

Where Alfi sits now

The Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum acquired an Alfi chair into its permanent collection in 2015 and later included it in the 2017 exhibition "Making | Breaking: New Arrivals," a show built around recently acquired objects chosen for what their materials and manufacture reveal, with Alfi's reclaimed-waste construction the reason curators gave for the acquisition. Emeco has since extended the shell into a lower-backed bar stool, a three-seat bench for waiting areas, an aluminium-legged outdoor edition, and — in 2022 — a swivel version, all built from the same 92.5/7.5 seat compound as the original chair.

Objena carries the Alfi Chair at AUD 940, alongside Morrison's aluminium 1 Inch Chair at AUD 1,280 as the same year's other answer to the same brief. The wider Emeco range and factory story are in the Emeco chapter.

Three questions

What is the Emeco Alfi chair made of? The seat and back are 100% reclaimed post-industrial waste — 92.5% polypropylene combined with 7.5% wood fibre, moulded in Vermont — which gives the surface a faint speckled texture from the visible wood particles. The legs are solid ash, hand-carved by an Amish supplier in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and finished natural or dark-stained.

Who designed the Alfi chair and when? Jasper Morrison designed Alfi for Emeco in 2015, at the invitation of Emeco owner Gregg Buchbinder. Morrison has said he drew the shell "remembering the classic cane café chairs you still see on Parisian pavements with rounded backs and flat seats" — the brief was an everyday chair, not a design statement.

Is there an outdoor or aluminium version of the Alfi chair? Yes. Emeco later built an aluminium-legged Alfi for outdoor use, and added a swivel version in 2022, alongside a lower-backed bar stool and a three-seat bench drawn from the same shell. Objena's registered Alfi is the original high-back chair on ash legs.