Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: Fumie Shibata's Flexform armchair

Eri by Fumie Shibata for Flexform. Photographed by Neil Godwin at Future Studios for Wallpaper*. Art direction by Sophie Gladstone

(Image credit: Neil Godwin)

A good armchair, we feel, is one that balances crisp elegance as a sculptural object with the feeling of a good hug when in use, and this is why Japanese designer Fumie Shibata’s debut creation for Flexform is a winner in our books.

Inspired by the uplifted lapels of a jacket (so demure), the leather-upholstered shell is cradled by a turned wooden base in either walnut, ash or oak, with die-cast zama feet in a range of finishes. Down-filled seat cushions and backrests complete the comfort factor.

‘Eri’ means ‘blessing’ in Japanese, and we applaud the friendly character and careful detail of Shibata’s design, which will surely win hearts and behinds across residential and commercial domains. In a sea of more angular chairs that proliferated on the stands of international design fairs last year, with hard edges and exposed construction, ‘Eri’ was a welcome rock against the flood – albeit a graceful and extremely comfortable one.

flexform.it

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Award 2025 winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

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Hugo is a design critic, curator and the co-founder of Bard, a gallery in Edinburgh dedicated to Scottish design and craft. A long-serving member of the Wallpaper* family, he has also been the design editor at Monocle and the brand director at Studioilse, Ilse Crawford's multi-faceted design studio. Today, Hugo wields his pen and opinions for a broad swathe of publications and panels. He has twice curated both the Object section of MIART (the Milan Contemporary Art Fair) and the Harewood House Biennial. He consults as a strategist and writer for clients ranging from Airbnb to Vitra, Ikea to Instagram, Erdem to The Goldsmith's Company. Hugo recently returned to the Wallpaper* fold to cover the parental leave of Rosa Bertoli as global design director, and is now serving as its design critic.