“The X-Line Chair is one of the few high-tech objects that came out of Denmark. But in many ways, it’s one of the most intelligent designs to come out of our country. So minimal and well thought out”. This is how Rolf Hay, co-founder of the Danish brand Hay, described the relaunch of a design signed by Niels Jorgen Haugesen in 1977.

The X-Line was born in the aftermath of the legendary period of Danish design, associated throughout the world with the smooth, organic forms from the likes of Arne Jacobsen, but it was Haugesen, a pupil of Jacobsen’s, who brought the same reflection into the high-tech age: the criss-crossed structure of slender chrome-plated steel wire, and the thin perforated metal sheet of the seat and back make transparency the hallmark of this chair.

The minimalist image is combined with another very material aspect that makes the X-Line design more than just contemporary: an economy in the use of materials, that translates into greater sustainability in production, both in terms of resource use and ecological footprint.

Hay, which has taken over the production and distribution rights from Magnus Olesen, has relaunched the X-Line as a “family”, designed for both indoor and outdoor use, and stackable, with new colors, and different finishes for matching cushions, confirming for the X-Line a vocation that, a few years after its birth, we would have begun to call “smart” (as well as “good design”).