A drop of water, a pebble and the light that slips between them. Eugeni Quitllet traces Kokó from its smallest particle to the finished chair.
Kokó starts with a particle. Eugeni Quitllet imagined a minimal element, a drop of water or a pebble, able to join another on its own and grow until it draws a form. The chair is the sum of that idea: dozens of drops linking together to raise, in a single gesture, a seat that embraces. “It’s a way of taking away the physical limit of matter,” the designer says.
That idea changes how the volume reads. The drops gather around the body, and the ergonomics arrive as naturally as if the piece had grown that way. Between one drop and the next is open space, and Quitllet gives it the same value as the material. “Air is as important as matter.”
Dew Before Sunrise
The image behind the project is morning dew on the petals of a flower, at the moment it begins to evaporate as the sun comes up. The name comes from the same place. Quitllet was after the idea of a memory, a perfume, “something that isn’t physical, more like a vapor in the air.” Kokó keeps that ethereal quality while being a remarkably strong piece.
Light as a Material
For the designer, the object is only the starting point. Each drop curves inward on one side and outward on the other, and that double curve gathers light and returns it as reflections and shadows. Beneath the chair and the table, a kaleidoscope forms and shifts as the sun moves. “An opaque material becomes transparent.”
That is where Quitllet’s interest in design lives: in what a piece gives off around it, an atmosphere of geometries born from movement.
A Single Gesture
All that lightness rests on a single piece of injected, lacquered polypropylene. Getting there took many years of work, until the injection could flow across the entire surface. Quitllet counts it among the most advanced objects he has made, both technically and creatively. The chairs stack naturally, and the same idea shapes a single-piece table.
Color completes its character. The designer’s favorite is a deep earthy red, full of passion, paired with a white-grey of real elegance.
