I'm gonna concentrate on associations in this shitty analysis. First the exterior and then the interior and then whatever else I think is interesting.
First of all, what makes something cozy? I'm gonna do the generic dictionary definition thing that people like to do because it'll kick me off. The Oxford dictionary defines cozy as “giving a feeling of comfort, warmth, and relaxation.” A cozy chair is a good chair and this chair is like the embodiment of that.
We can break this design down into 2 parts. The “interior” or the part where the person would touch, and the “exterior”, the molded plywood.
The exterior.
The exterior of the chair is very cozy.
Wood is seen as stable and grounding in fengshui, (which does have merit, it's not all old superstitious junk) So since comfort and relaxation comes with the implication of safety, the exterior of the chair being this shell of wood provides the viewer this mental association of safety, and therefore coziness. (generally you look at what you sit on before sitting) The shape also plays into this as it smoothly conforms and sort of encloses the leather interior, sort of like a cupped hand (The eames lounge is very “whole” relative to other mcm lounge chair designs). Wood also provides associations of warmth due to its color and its usage as fuel for fires and as material for houses and all of that adds to the whole coziness appeal.
The interior.
The leather interior compliments the natural wood exterior. The “dimples” are cool because they do 2 things, first, they give the leather wrinkles which makes the chair appear more human and natural. What's something that also has a few wrinkles? Human bodies. The wrinkles from the dimples make the chair more welcoming which is welcome as this sort of sleek design can veer towards sterility which cuts at the coziness. Do me a favor and pretend the dimples weren’t there and just imagine the interior as smooth and perfectly rounded. Not as appealing right? Second, the dimples provide familiar associations to vintage designs, designs which you might’ve seen in your grandma's house. Familiarity is good because we like things which we are used to as they are “safe”.
Whatever else.
The chair portion of the piece sits at a roughly 15 degree tilt upwards which pushes whoever is sitting in this chair back via gravity. This is a very common feature in lounge chairs as for a lounge chair to be a lounge chair it must lounge you. A lot of what makes this chair so amazing is actually in the segmentation of the shape as well as the beautiful proportions. This one is tough for me but I think what makes the segmentation so appealing is because it makes the chair look more intricate and more technologically advanced? like a transformer and its layers of metal armor. I don’t have much to say about the proportions except that they are beautifully done. Maybe someone could take the golden ratio and somehow apply it to this chair to see if it matches something. I think my favorite part of this chair has got to be the plywood exterior in combination with the natural leather interior with the cool ass segmentation (ie the whole ass chair), i'm just a big fan of molded plywood honestly...
All of this lends itself to make an awesome ass chair.
(images below from herman miller)
