Header: Amanda Romero
Solea is a cosy lounge chair made of a looping steel frame and a thick cotton cushion strapped into it. Amanda Romero designed it in 2025 as a student at the University of Houston‘s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, working with the support of Professor Jeff Feng. The chair is the most recent winner of the “Lounge Chair” category of the SIT Furniture Design Awards.
A journey and fifteen concepts
The chair was born from a studio exercise where Romero had to name the five qualities that describe how she designs and only then go looking for a form to put them into. She gathered 25 reference images, sketched abstract shapes from them and then made more than 30 studies of forms that hinted at seating without being chairs yet. The class also visited the Design Within Reach showroom in Houston, where she sketched five of the chairs on display and went through their proportions, details and structure.
She then designed 15 chair concepts and presented them to the class, which picked the best five on creativity, feasibility and clarity of intent, and the seventh was the one she decided to see through to the end.
Reaching the final frame
The first model had legs and nothing else, no seat and no backrest, so Romero could freely work out the proportions and how the chair would stand up. The second added a backrest and a hole in the side for a swivel table, while the third opened up the legs to make the piece lighter without losing stability. Testing then showed the backrest to be too short, so she lengthened it and reshaped it for better comfort.
The final version is made of welded steel tubing, with rods added for strength, and the seat is supported by two bars at the back. Seen from the side, the tube drops from the seat, curls out along the floor and rises again, so the base resembles one solid and long wave. The chair stands about 84 cm tall and measures 81 cm across.
The task of bending the steel
Romero built a half-scale model with 3D-printed tubes to check the proportions and the connections before committing to the full-size chair. She borrowed a tube bender and bent the metal in her garage with a classmate, but the machine was made for electrical conduit and gave her bad bends and unusable lengths. She then took her 3D print and her model to a wrought iron company, which agreed to bend the frame properly.
The first frame they produced did not match her design, so she and the company went back and forth revising it until the bends were right. She then sanded it, treated it against rust, primed it, sprayed it and left the clear coat to dry for 24 hours.
The cushion and its straps
The cushion is an unbleached cotton and linen blend in a raw off-white, filled with polyester and sewn with a high-strength polyester thread. Romero ironed, sewed and stuffed it herself, then made the straps that hold it to the frame. Each strap is sewn to the edge of the cushion, folded over the steel tube and closed back on itself with a polished gold snap.
Underneath the seat, the straps come together around a metal ring at the centre of the base, each one snapped onto it. Pulling from every side at once, they draw the fabric inwards and hold the cushion in its round, dished shape.
Seven fun colours
The prototype was sprayed in Mars Orange, a glossy MTN 94 spray paint that pops out against the off-white cotton, but the chair can also be made in green, magenta, red, blue, yellow and brushed nickel.
“While the chair can exist in multiple colour variations, this tone introduces a playful moment of colour, bringing warmth, experimentation and joy into interior spaces.”
Amanda Romero
Project information
Lead Designer: Amanda Romero
Other Credits: Professor Jeff Feng
School: Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, University of Houston
Photography: Amanda Romero
Location: Houston, USA
Date: 2025
