Designer Francesco Feliziani reimagines basketball hoop as sculptural AIR Chair

Francesco Feliziani, a designer, has created a sculptural seating piece called AIR Chair by repurposing a disassembled basketball hoop. The work was first displayed at the UnBroken exhibition during the London Design Festival last year. Rather than a basic upcycling effort, the project represents a narrative transformation where the hoop's metal frame, net, and sporty geometry are decontextualized to become a domestic object while preserving their original identity. The seat emerges from the hoop's circular ring, still tensioned with interwoven cords that recall the net's movement, while the metallic structure converts into an essential, almost industrial frame. The result is a chair that appears suspended and lightweight, as indicated by its name, AIR, maintaining the visual tension of athletic action but translating it into a static, contemplative gesture. Feliziani's approach focuses on material transformation, reusing nearly every component of the original object, with only cords and some 3D-printed elements added. Conceived as a unique piece specifically for the show, the chair bridges memory and function, found object and contemporary design. The color palette contrasts the structure's matte black, the hoop's iconic orange, and the cord's white, evoking urban playgrounds and sports culture, while the backrest's transparency introduces a lighter, technical dimension that reinforces the suspension concept. AIR Chair serves as an exercise in functional design, where a hoop ceases to be a play tool and becomes a space for pause without losing its original energy, telling a story of movement even when stationary.