Header: Courtesy of HEM and Max Lamb
The Min Chair is a solid pine chair built from three timber posts, each one cut along a diagonal, with almost none of the wood going to waste. It was designed by Max Lamb, a British designer, for Swedish brand Hem as a production version of his Economy Chair. It recently made its debut at 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen, in June of 2026.
“This is an exciting continuation of our work with Max. As editor, our role was to bring this iteration into production without compromising the idea.”
Petrus Palmér, founder and CEO of Hem
The polystyrene original
The design goes back to 2020, when Lamb made 60 chairs by hand over three days, cutting them out of slabs of polystyrene with hot-wire tools, which melt their way through the foam. Every chair was then coated in polyurethane rubber.
Later pieces, titled Economy Chair, were cut twelve at a time from a single slab of polystyrene with almost nothing left over. Each one was then sprayed in a rubber colour that Lamb mixed by hand. He has since made one-off pieces from the same design in other materials, from copper to silver nitrate.
Three posts of pine
The chair begins, this time, with a single pine post, sliced at a diagonal angle so that it gives as much surface as possible to the two front legs. A second post, cut in the same way, was turned into both back legs and the backrest, while a third, again cut on the diagonal, became the seat. The pieces were then joined with dowels, which are short pins fitted into holes drilled in each part.
Put simply, every part of the chair comes from posts of the same size, only cut to different lengths, which is why Hem describes the design as “near-zero-waste“.
Made in Poland
For the production version, Hem had the chair made in Poland from solid pine certified by the FSC (the Forest Stewardship Council, which checks that wood comes from responsibly managed forests). It is finished in a matte lacquer with a light white pigment, and the pine will take on a richer colour as it ages, according to the brand.
The Min Chair is Lamb’s third design for Hem, after the Last Stool in 2015 and the Max Table, also in wood, in 2019, both of which are still being produced.
Shown in Copenhagen
The chair was first presented in Design Starts on Paper, a show put together by MBSY Lab on Papirøen, an island in Copenhagen’s harbour, from the 10th to the 12th of June. Hem shared it with acoustic brand BAUX and lighting brand Blond. Hem’s own installation was built around a large arrangement of the Palo Block Sofa, a modular piece, which was covered for the occasion in a pink tartan made specially by textile company Sahco.
Project information
Furniture Company: Hem
Lead Designer: Max Lamb
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Date: 2026
