On the Cadre Chair and Stool, seat and frame do not touch anywhere visible. Cassandra Bradfield and Sofia Olsson of ASCA Studio, based in Copenhagen, Denmark, designed the pieces for New Zealand brand Resident with a deliberate void running between the aluminum structure and the upholstered shell, closed only by fixings hidden inside the frame.

The gap reads as suspension. Nothing visibly bridges the seat to its support, so the upholstery appears to hover inside a frame available in brushed aluminum or dark bronze powder coat. Concealing the hardware shifts the sculptural weight onto the frame itself, a constructivist arrangement of straight aluminum members that carries the chair’s structure without competing with the seat’s contoured surface.

ASCA Studio, founded by Bradfield and Olsson, starts projects from a material discovery, a fabric or a metal that pushes an idea forward before a fixed brief exists. Bradfield sets the overall proportions and Olsson works out the finer details, a division that shows in Cadre’s pairing of a bold geometric frame with a closely worked seat. The chair and stool mark the studio’s first collaboration with Resident, designed across the distance between Copenhagen and Resident’s base in Auckland, New Zealand.

On the chair, a horizontal bar spans the top of the backrest at the height of a tabletop edge, so a row of chairs pushed in at a long table reads as one continuous line from behind. The same bar doubles as a handle, letting the chair be pulled out and pushed back without touching the upholstery. ASCA designed the seat and backrest for long dinners, setting a soft, contoured cushion against the rigid geometry of the frame, a combination built to repeat evenly down a long table.