Max Lamb Makes Material Go Further With The "Min Chair"
Alongside Hem, the British designer has turned one of his most experimental furniture ideas into a ready-to-buy product.
Summary:
- Max Lamb’s Min Chair is a pine seat cut from a single timber dimension, producing near-zero waste across its legs, seat, and backrest
- The chair is a production version of Lamb’s self-build Economy Chair concept, developed with Hem over several years and available from August at $899 USD / €799 EUR
- It’s the third Lamb x Hem piece after the Last Stool (2015) and the Max Table (2019), both still in production
British designer Max Lamb has revealed a new chair set to launch this August. Named the “Min Chair”, and produced by Scandinavian design brand Hem, it sees his long-standing “Economy Chair” concept turned into a timber production-ready version.
Constructed from pine, the Min Chair is built around a deceptively simple principle: a standard timber section is cut diagonally to create multiple structural components, allowing the same quantity of material to go significantly further than in conventional chair construction.
The result is a piece that appears almost primitive in form, but – as with much of Lamb’s work – is underpinned by careful engineering.
Lamb, whose practice has often involved physically demanding material experiments — from casting molten metal into beach sand to carving furniture from stone — first developed the original Economy Chair in 2020 using polystyrene. That early version was closer to a conceptual prototype than a commercial product, and was more focused on exploring the idea that structural efficiency could also become a visual language.
Erik Lefvander
Erik Lefvander
Erik Lefvander
Erik Lefvander
Erik Lefvander
Erik Lefvander
“The design itself has been conceived to use almost half the quantity of material that would be required to make the same chair with square legs,” Lamb said, describing a construction logic in which cutting timber diagonally effectively creates “two legs for the price of one.”
But turning a workshop experiment into a scalable product presented complications. Unlike plastic, timber behaves unpredictably — expanding, contracting and shifting with environmental conditions. Lamb said moving into wood required redesigning elements of the structure and adjusting manufacturing techniques to improve consistency, including joining smaller timber sections to create more stable components.
For Hem, which has increasingly positioned itself as a platform for enduring designer collaborations rather than trend-driven launches, the chair extends an established relationship with Lamb that began with the Last Stool in 2015 and continued with the Max Table in 2019. Both remain in production.
“This is an exciting continuation of our work with Max,” Hem founder and chief executive Petrus Palmer said. “Our role was to bring this iteration into production without compromising the idea.”
The launch also arrives as design brands face growing scrutiny over sustainability claims, with efficiency in materials and production becoming a stronger commercial consideration as well as a conceptual one.
Lamb stops short of framing the chair as an eco proposition, but its construction aligns with broader industry interest in waste reduction and manufacturing restraint.
Rather than concealing efficiency behind polished engineering, the design makes its structural logic explicit: blunt pine sections, angular cuts, no decorative excess. It is less a chair dressed up as minimalism than a chair that looks exactly like how it was made.
The “Min” chair launches in August and will be priced at $899 USD (approximately €799).
