Since 1952 Italian company Moroso has been designing sofas and chairs using some of the best names in the business, such as Ron Arad, Carlo Colombo, and Enrico Franzolini. Late in 2008, designer Patricia Urquiola showed preview models of the Tropicalia Collection, which includes chairs, chaise lounges, and armchairs (all preview models, but look at the Moroso website for availability) using weaving techniques.

Tropicalia Chair. Designed by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso.

Three different versions use polymer, polyester HT, and leather strings to create weaves. The base of stainless or varnished steel emphasizes the tubular. Moroso describes the Tropicalia Collection in this rather florid way: "complex geometrical shapes embellished with a clever weft of threads that alternate solids and voids to a specific pattern, paying meticulous attention to detail." Briefly, Tropicalia uses lines-lines that cross in ways that call attention to space.

The choice of material transforms Tropicalia from playful to elegant. The chair in thermoplastic polymer combines three vibrant colors, producing an effect quite similar to the dizzying shapes created by old spirograph toys. This is the version that one might sit in while listening to The Sugar Cubes. Double plaited leather cords in one or two colors make the Tropicalia more coconut than kiwi with a subdued palette of earth tones. The leather version, especially as a chaise lounge, suggests that Tropicalia descends from the mid-century greats. One might enjoy a sloe gin highball in said lounge chair. The Tropicalia chair, with or without arms, revels in geometry. Its seat and back are hexagons of various dimensions: from the 54" wide size, with almost equilateral sides, to the 94" wide size, with elongated top and bottom. Designer Urquiola seems to be channeling the most classic of modern chairs. Perhaps she's been dreaming of hypotrochoids in Technicolor and of Elizabeth Taylor in Rhapsody.