XY Foldable arm chair. Independent Project. Design: Stefan Lindfors 1985. Photo: Lars Rebers The XY chair is regarded as Lindfors' first professional project, and the start of his career as Designer. The two prototypes were selected to the Finnish Design Exhibition “Suomi Muotoilee 5" at the Museum of Industrial Arts, in summer 1985. In Fall 1985 the Finnish design magazine Muoto published a four page article about XY. This was Lindfors' first appearance in professional media. The red-legged prototype is in the permanent collection of the Design Museum, Helsinki, Finland.  XY's innovative solutions derive from Lindfors' extensive experience with sailing boats. His aim was to make a comfortable, durable, and completely collapsible chair. The six-legged construction is held together with cables and cable-screws. The seat and backrest are made of 8-ounce polyester sailcloth. Lindfors custom-designed springs that tighten the sailcloth surfaces until they are rigid as laminates. When the springs are released, the chair folds into a compact roll. The vertical legs are adonized aluminum and the horizontal supports are flexible fiberglass rod. This structural flexibility greatly enhances the chair's durability. The seat and backrest are upholstered with printed cotton fabric that attaches to the polyester fabric with Velcro. Lindfors made two prototypes of the chair, one with red legs and one with yellow legs. The article in Finnish design magazine “Muoto” was a provocative presentation of Lindfors and his chair. A story-board layout demonstrating the chair's assembly and durability showed in one sequence a naked Lindfors wrapped tight in his own cables and in another the yellow-legged prototype being thrown off the roof of a 7-story building. XY survived two tests without suffering any damage. The article's design was conceived and executed by Finnish Artist Pekka Niskanen....