“Cantilever.” You design junkies have all heard the term. Random House defines it as “any rigid structural member projecting from a vertical support, esp. one in which the projection is great in relation to the depth; any rigid construction extending horizontally well beyond its vertical support.”

MYTO cantilever chair. Designed by Konstantin Grcic. Manufactured by Plank.

I’m familiar with it from back in my construction days, as in cantilevered floor joist or cantilevered deck, which, as far as I was concerned, just meant a nice detail that hid the understructure so as to avoid additional trim-work. But the concept is really crucial to design, since it suggests an aesthetic choice as well as a certain structural efficacy that allows one to accomplish more with less…

Moving from wood to plastic (and not just any plastic, but “Ultradur High Speed,” an engineered plastic with “extreme flowability” created by BASF), we see the new generation of cantilevered technology at this year’s Salone de Milano with Myto by Konstantic Grcic for Plank—”an ultra-tech, multi-use chair that pushes at the bounds of formal frontiers.” Fair enough, you may find yourself saying, love the funky plastic chair, but what’s this nonsense about extreme flowability? which, as a cantankerous former English professor once said, “sounds like jargon to me.” The short answer is that new technologies require new idioms; the long one is, according to BASF: “Ultradur High Speed makes the production of injection-molded plastic components less expensive and helps to save energy. These factors qualify the material to receive an eco-efficiency label from BASF. This label is awarded to products that perform better from an environmental and financial standpoint than comparable products.” So good flow is just that, and of central importance in molded plastics, since molding requires flow, and since flow occurs only at substantial investment of time and money and techie brain power.

What BASF, Plank, and Grcic have done with their new-found flow is create a stackable indoor/outdoor posterior-cantilevered chair with a distinct personality. The absence of a rear supporting structure makes it appear animate—it looks capable of an odd species of lurching/hopping bipedal locomotion, as if, should you turn your back on it, when you look again it will have propelled itself across the room. Its resemblance to any number of odd creatures who defy taxonomic classification as well as a basis in reality (Penguins, Kangaroos, or, my favorite, the squat little robot minions from the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon, “Lighter Than Hare”) gives it a sense of playfulness and whimsy coupled with just a bit of menace: Myto is a perfect recipe for innovation in contemporary design.