Emeco Furniture

At CLIMA Home, we have a vast assortment of high-end furniture from numerous brands; but when customers walk into our showroom looking for new chairs that are built for longevity as much as high design, we immediately point them in the direction of our collection from Emeco.

EMECO, an acronym for The Electrical Machine and Equipment Company (EMECO), was founded in 1944 in Hanover, Pennsylvania, by Wilton C. Dinges, whom the U.S. Navy commissioned to produce a lightweight, non-corrosive, fire-resistant, and torpedo-proof chair that was tough enough to withstand conditions aboard submarines and warships. At the time, salvaged aluminum was plentiful, but methods to make it highly resistant were not. Emeco combined its superior design skills and innovative techniques to create the now-iconic 1006 Navy Chair.

Today, the creative process behind the development of Emeco products remains loose and organic, intuitive, and explorative. The philosophy is rooted in the fact that the search for good design is as much part of the development process as is the forming, welding, and hand-finishing of its products. Emeco’s designers and manufacturers are equally valued and respected, and their combined dedication, intuition, and skill have uniformly contributed to the company’s continuing growth. Emeco’s skilled craftspeople remain guardians of what is considered a lost art, dedicating their time and talents to manufacturing products designed to last for 150 years or more.

History

For more than a half-century, the 1006 Navy Chair was the only chair Emeco produced. Following World War II and through the 1970s, the U.S. government was the largest purchaser of the chairs. However, the end of the Cold War marked a significant decrease in the U.S. military and, as a result, sales of the 1006 chair plummeted. It wasn’t until 1998, when current CEO Gregg Buchbinder took over the company, that Emeco began working with such notable designers as the incomparable Philippe Starck. As a result, what was once a military-grade chair became a symbol of high design and superior construction for those in-the-know.

Starck and Buchbinder continued to innovate, developing a series of products, including the Hudson Chair, designed for New York City’s Hudson Hotel in 2001. The chair won the GOOD Design Award and was accepted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

In 2004, Buchbinder began working with the great mid-century architect Frank Gehry to develop the Superlight Chair, which also won a GOOD Design Award and was accepted into the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

Designers

Over the years, Emeco has introduced other award-winning designs to its growing chair collection, many of which were fashioned in collaboration with ultra-prestigious designers and architects, including

• Adrian van Hooydonk of BMW Designworks, who transformed the 1951, a long-lost Emeco hospital chair, into a lower-cost classic design
• Norman Foster of Foster and Partners, who designed the 20-06, a stacking chair for the 2006 Smithsonian edition in Washington, D.C.
• Andreé Putman, who created the Morgans Chair for the restored Morgans Hotel in NYC
• Ettore Sottsass, whose Nino-O chair was launched at Salone del Mobile in 2008, a few months after Sottsass passed away at the age of 90

Other notable designers include Jasper Morrison (1 Inch, 2 Inch, Alfi, and Navy Officer), Nendo (Su), Michael Young (Lancaster), Barber & Osgerby (On & On), Konstantin Grcic (Parrish), Sam Hecht & Kim Colin (Run), Naoto Fukasawa (Za), Jean Nouvel (SoSo), and Christophe Pillet (Sezz).

Materials

Since 1944, Emeco has been building chairs from 80 percent recycled aluminum that are 100 percent recyclable. But while recycled content and the ability to be recycled is important, what truly makes Emeco aluminum chairs stand out is their remarkable estimated life span of 150 years or more.

Emeco’s aluminum chairs are handmade in the same Pennsylvania factory where the company was founded in the 1940s. Forming, welding, grinding, heat-treating, finishing, and anodizing are just a few of the staggering 77 steps it takes to build an Emeco aluminum chair. To give these chairs their finish, Emeco hand-brushes every inch before it anodizes them, transforming the surface to aluminum oxide – a durable finish almost as hard as diamonds! Each chair is polished three times by hand; when done, it gleams like a piece of jewelry.

Emeco continues to lead the industry in sustainability, constantly exploring new ways to use environmentally responsible resources, and reuse consumer and industrial waste. It is also committed to choosing materials, methods, and processes that impact the environment as little as possible, but without compromising design, performance, or affordability. In 2010, Emeco collaborated with Coca-Cola to upcycle plastic bottles in the form of the 111 Navy Chair. That design – which won the GOOD Design Award and the IF International Design Forum Product Design Award – is so named because each chair keeps 111 plastic bottles out of landfills.

Projects

Some of Emeco’s most significant projects include: McDonald’s locations worldwide; Walt Disney Parks in California and Florida; five-star hotels, including Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Mondrian Los Angeles, The Peninsula Hong Kong, and W Bali; retail locations for brands such as American Eagle, Whole Foods, Baccarat, Banana Republic, Bloomingdale’s, Giorgio Armani, Kiehl’s Cosmetics, and Clinique; colleges and universities like Bryn Mawr College, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Yale; corporate headquarters for Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Nissan, RJ Reynolds, Sony BMG, The Wall Street Journal, Time Equities, and Urban Outfitters; and many others.

“We make chairs. In America. Often by hand. Mostly from recycled stuff. But always to last.”