Designer Karin Ekwall created the clever Åsta stool, a portable seat that mixes the traditional Scandinavian furniture and history of joinery into a nostalgic and aesthetic piece of carpentry. The stool is made entirely of wood — absolutely no screws or nails are needed to put it together. Inspired by the old workshop clamps, the stool is held together through a joining method where small handles lock the legs in place. The seat can easily be flat packed for shipping or to tote with you wherever you go. Ekwall plans to use the joining method to create an entire series of furniture.
It simplicity makes it highly versatile. This stool can be used for in many settings.
“Keep it simple” you might say. This reminds me of the Romanian Pavilion at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale where tripod stools made by the “rudari” (peasant woodworkers) of Northern Oltenia, Romania were also exposed. The curator of the exhibition, arch. Serban Sturdza, declared in an interview that given it’s half-moon shape this is a chair to sit and work, not to sit.
There were also exposed some modern interpretations of this stool.
You can find some pictures here http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/4068/venice-architecture-biennale-08-romanian-pavilion.html
and a video from the exhibition back in Bucharest, Romania here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0fzy0pCdsk