FeW’s New Chairs Turn Construction Steel Into Everyday Furniture

Header: Ângulos, photo by Pedro Barcellos

The “Faixa” and the “Cantilever” are two steel dining chairs that the Brazilian brand Estúdio FeW has just put on sale, both of them drawn by the Rio de Janeiro designer Bernardo Senna. They are built in Mesquita, a town in the Baixada Fluminense about 40 km from central Rio, inside a metalworking plant whose ordinary week is spent on scaffolding and formwork for concrete. Mateus Salimena, who runs the plant and started the brand, has been making furniture there since 2023 on machines that were already in use in the building.

The brand’s name was taken from the periodic table: “Fe” for iron and “W” for tungsten, the two metals in steel. Salimena gives it a second meaning as well: “Just don’t overthink, follow the instincts, go back to essentials“.

The Faixa

The Faixa (which means “band” in Portuguese) is built around a single flat strip of steel, which stands on its edge and runs around all four sides under the seat. The four round legs are welded to it at the corners, and since that strip is the only thing holding the frame square, the chair has no rails under the sides of the seat. The cushion sits straight on top of it and hangs over the edge a little. The chair comes in rust brown with orange leather and in dark green with a quilted cotton seat.

The Cantilever

The Cantilever is an armchair small enough to use at a table, and its whole frame is a single steel bar bent in one line. The bar starts at the front foot and rises past the seat, then runs backwards as an armrest before bending to form the backrest, looping on itself. The backrest is made of a single piece of leather stretched over the top bar, while the seat is a square leather cushion with rounded corners that rests on flat steel straps.

Ângulos

Ângulos (which means “angles” in Portuguese) was the first chair FeW made, in 2023. Thin steel bars run diagonally between its legs, under the seat, in the same triangles used to brace a scaffolding tower, and they hold the four splayed legs steady well enough that the chair needs no frame around the seat at all.

The backrest is a flat steel plate, folded into four narrow faces and held up by the two back legs. Since each face is turned at a slightly different angle to the light, the same green paint looks pale on one and dark on the next. FeW says the chair did well with the public and especially with architects and now calls it its first icon.

How they are made

All three chairs are made from solid steel bar, the same material the factory keeps for construction work. A solid bar is heavier than a hollow tube but also stiffer, which is what lets the legs stay very thin. Once the frames are assembled, the welds are ground down, so the bars seem to touch without any joint uniting them.

The colour comes from powder coating, in which the parts are sprayed with a dry powder that has been given an electric charge so that it sticks to the metal. They are then baked in an oven until the powder melts into a solid layer, which covers welds, cut edges and folds in exactly the same tone and leaves no brush marks.

Project information

Design Company: FeW
Lead Designer: Bernardo Senna
Director: Mateus Salimena
Photography: Pedro Barcellos
Location: Mesquita, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Date: 2026