It began with an impression reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich, were it not anchored in modernism: the young Dutchman Joop Couwenberg observed how fishermen collected garbage from the sea. Endless tons of recyclable material that was collected to be processed, pressed and reshaped. The idea of extending the life cycles of a product impressed him and he used it as the driving idea for his new object: the cantilever stool.

However, the material chosen by the industrial designer and graduate of Eindhoven University of Technology was not plastic, but soft, warm cork, which normally tops wine bottles. Couwenberg collected corks, found a social institution in Belgium that shredded the material during his research and began experimenting.

"After extensive testing, I found a way to press granulate from recycled wine corks together with a mixture of latex and jute into a stable and soft material that can be processed into a pleasantly warm seat," reports the young designer, who needs around 150 corks for one seat.

For the curved tubular steel frame, Couwenberg, who founded his studio in Tilburg, the Netherlands, in 2014, was inspired by the functional approaches of the Bauhaus. He was fascinated by the idea that had already captivated designers from Mart Stam to Marcel Breuer: the idea of floating, which was combined with the contrast of rigid seating and resulted in an oscillating piece of furniture: the cantilever chair.

"As in the design of Mart Stam's cantilever chairs, I used steel tubes for the cantilever frame to increase the load-bearing capacity of the construction," says Joop Couwenberg about the development of the stool, which quotes classical models but grows into an independent, pure piece of furniture.

When designing the triangular shape of his steel frame, he was consciously guided by the idea that the furniture should be stackable and at the same time take healthy sitting into account. "I used the resilience to design an object that encourages active and upright sitting," he explains. "The chair brings the hips forward so that the back is relieved."

Presented for the first time at the 2015 International Furniture Fair in Cologne, the sophisticated cantilever stool independently combines the ideas of Bauhaus with modernity. In addition to the cork seat on tubular steel, this is also ensured by the version with fabric seats, which spread a good mood as colorful "Smarties" around the dining table, side table or at the bar. The cantilever stool is available in three different heights.

The young designer Joop Couwenberg graduated from the Eindhoven University of Technology and has been working as an industrial designer ever since. In 2014, he founded his studio in Tilburg, the Netherlands.