Evolving Catifa (RE) 46

Twenty-five years is a long time for any object to remain relevant — and Catifa has done so precisely because it has never stood still. Each revision has been a response to the world around it: how we live, what we value, and what we understand about the things we make.

In recent years, that understanding has shifted profoundly. The question of materials — where they come from, where they go — became impossible to ignore. So we revisited Catifa's core, introducing PaperShell and recycled plastics not as a statement, but as a natural consequence of thinking honestly about design.

This year, we turned our attention to the covers. They are not a detail — a cover defines the character of a chair as much as its form does. The new covers have been redesigned around a single constraint: no glues. The result is a finish that can be removed and replaced with ease, extending the life of the chair and keeping material flows clean and traceable.

This is what revision means to us: not reinvention for its own sake, but a commitment to getting it more right, each time.

The most interesting shift is cognitive rather than spatial — it's about specifiers, buyers, and even end users starting to think about furniture as something that evolves rather than gets replaced. The replaceable cover is a small thing physically, but it changes the relationship someone has with the object.

Spaces with long lifecycles — hospitality, education, corporate environments — where furniture is expected to last and the ability to refresh or resell rather than replace becomes genuinely valuable, both economically and environmentally.

Organizations with sustainability commitments that go beyond procurement — where the traceability of materials and the absence of glues in the covers actually matters to how they report and communicate their choices. 

Resale and circular economy ecosystems — the cover redesign feels particularly significant here. A chair that can be easily refreshed before a second sale is a different kind of product proposition, and that could shift how specifiers think about end-of-life from the very beginning. 

Last not least:

Homes — A chair that moves with you — through different spaces, different tastes, different phases of life — is a fundamentally different proposition than one that gets left behind or discarded when the context changes. The replaceable cover means the chair can evolve with the person who owns it: a new color for a new apartment, a refresh after years of use. And in the reality of domestic life — small children, cats, the general wear of a lived-in home — fabric covers naturally take more punishment than in any other setting. Being able to replace them easily, without replacing the chair, is not just a sustainability argument. It's a practical one that anyone who has ever owned a sofa will immediately understand. That kind of longevity is quiet but profound, and it speaks to a growing desire to own fewer, better things.