Life is hectic. Screens run us. Finding a moment of calm and connecting with nature is not particularly easy. Hornbach has come to the rescue with the Green Hideaway, a chair that’s a natural antidote to the pressures of urban life – a slice of woodland within the concrete jungle – and to people’s increasingly artificial home environments, including homes becoming offices. It allows everyone to experience the great outdoors, even from a concrete high-rise. The Green Hideaway evolves over time as the wood ages and the plants grow, like having a small corner of the forest in your living room or home office.
The “living” chair features a natural wooden frame entwined with trailing greenery and plays into the millennial trend for houseplants. The concept was brought together by Hornbach, its creative agency HeimatTBWA\, and Swedish design duo, Front/, known for their clean, Scandinavian design aesthetic that’s heavily inspired by nature. Despite being a designer piece, the Green Hideaway can be constructed entirely from materials available in Hornbach stores, allowing anyone to recreate it with the help of a template and instructions.
The chair, which is based on the classic Swedish chair known as the pinnstol, is the latest edition in the Werkstück series that aims to make high-end design accessible and more affordable. For just the price of the materials and a day or two of your time – plus a dash of passion for DIY – standout original pieces can become affordable luxuries.
As well as its aesthetic appeal, Green Hideaway offers some undeniable health benefits. A study by Cardiff University found that houseplants not only improve air quality by filtering out CO2, but can also increase productivity and concentration – invaluable for home workers struggling to maintain their work-life balance.
Thomas Schnaitmann, director of brand international for Hornbach stated, “In these turbulent times it feels exactly right to offer a solution to help integrate nature – with its proven calming effect – into people’s daily lives.”
Front/ co-founder, Anna Lindgren, added, “In Sweden nature is so much part of our lives, it’s like the forest is our second living room. But the modern world pulls people away from contact with nature. The Green Hideaway is our antidote to this. It’s something that lives and evolves over time.”
Guido Heffels, lead creative for Hornbach at Heimat, stated, “The idea behind the Werkstück series is to democratise great design. It’s an inspired idea – and one that we’re proud to be part of for five years now and counting. But more than that, in 2023 we think it’s very interesting to use design as a tool to improve people’s daily lives. In this case we’ve created a never-been-seen- before designer chair that’s really in tune with our modern age. And most importantly – you can’t buy it, you have to build it.”
The international campaign has launched first in Sweden, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, before rolling out in other countries. It will run both online and on TV, supported with print and the DIY magazine.
