NM01 Crate Chair

The NM01 Crate Chair began as a question about café seating. The designer remembered dairy crates being used as seats on city streets and set out to keep the crate working as a crate, its contents still inside, while adding a backrest on top. The first prototype was made in November 2024.

Once the backrest was resolved, a second idea followed: the backrest could fold out and serve as a small table. In the second prototype, the backrest was made detachable from the base.

The latest version was developed so that the piece fits every standard-size dairy crate. The original hooks were replaced with droppers, which locate the seat on any crate of standard dimensions and also let the chair stand on its own, without a crate at all.

The chair is CNC-cut from Euro birch plywood and finished with clear polyurethane. The same flat-cut parts work as a seat on a crate, as a freestanding low chair or, with the back folded out, as a small table.