Developed for commercial outdoor spaces through Activa Leisure, 2019.
The Barbuda Collection is a contemporary reinterpretation of the European café chair, the iconic steel bistro form that has furnished the continent's cafés and squares for generations and fills the streets of Cologne's Old Town. Designed in 2019 for commercial outdoor spaces, Barbuda carries that enduring café silhouette into a program built for restaurant patios, hospitality terraces, and other high-traffic settings, keeping the everyday durability the form is known for while bringing a level of seated comfort the hard-seated original never offered.
What sets Barbuda apart from the classic café chair is what you sit on. Where the traditional bistro chair seats you on rigid bent metal or woven cane, Barbuda suspends the seat and back in Sunbrella® sling, a tensioned performance textile that gives with the body for a level of comfort those hard-seated originals were never able to offer. The sling blends the strength of PVC with the softness of Sunbrella's acrylic yarn, supportive without stiffness and engineered for daily commercial service. Because it is solution-dyed and UV-stable, it holds its color in full sun and resists water, mold, and mildew, drying quickly after rain and wiping clean with mild soap without the upkeep of cushions or the fading and cracking of lesser materials.
The sling is carried on a frame of powder-coated aluminum, with arms and legs bent into the soft, continuous curve of the classic bistro chair while staying light and stackable for everyday commercial service. The arms are drawn in a flattened oval, racetrack profile rather than standard round tube, adding width across the surface where the forearm rests so the chair supports the arm more comfortably than the thin round rail of the original. It is a fuller, more relaxed reading of a form once defined by bent rod, refined for a design-forward terrace while remaining true to the warmth and familiarity that made the café chair a classic.
The Barbuda Collection brings the European café chair outdoors for contract use, pairing a timeless bistro silhouette in powder-coated aluminum with the comfort and weather performance of Sunbrella® sling. A familiar form reworked for the realities of a working patio.