With its impressive strength-to-weight ratio and vibration-dampening qualities, magnesium has long been a go-to metal for structural applications, and for precision-engineered parts like orthopedic implants and aerospace components. But Vela, a superlight and impossibly thin chair due to be released by the Italian furniture powerhouse Magis in 2020, promises to bring the high-performance material into restaurants, offices, and countless other everyday settings—and, in doing so, makes the case for this earth-friendly metal as a viable alternative to plastic.

Magis first approached designers Gilli Kuchik and Ran Amitai in 2017 with what the couple describe as a “dream project”: an invitation to design a chair that celebrates the unique material properties of magnesium. “Magis as a company is very much technologically driven,” says the manufacturer’s CEO, Alberto Perazza. Kuchik adds: “The majority of our products are generated by the desire to experiment with a given material or technology.”

To get a sense of the material’s attributes, Kuchik and Amitai examined magnesium aerospace components. Since the element weighs 33 percent less than aluminum and 75 percent less than steel, the designers decided the best way to show off its surprising light-as-air quality would be to design a stacking chair—an object that begs to be picked up.

Foil models of the Vela Chair during the design process. **Courtesy Aya Wind**

Speaking with magnesium manufacturing specialists in Israel (where Kuchik and Amitai are based), the pair learned that molten magnesium flows more easily through a mold than common metals like aluminum—an advantage that allows it to be die-cast with much thinner walls. The duo abandoned their initial designs around thin structural members and began to treat the metal more like a molded plastic shell. “Understanding that we need to use the magnesium as a skin and not as a skeleton was so key for us in the design process,” says Kuchik.