For urban homes with too much clutter, try the designs that really do stack up

Ace space- savers: stacking Tip Ton rocker, £197, in eight colours, from the Conran Shop (vitra.com)
Barbara Chandler10 April 2012

Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, the London design duo who dreamed up the golden Olympic torch, have now won a "best product 2011" award from a leading design magazine for their Tip Ton stacking rocking chair, just one of a new crop of designs that neatly stack and/or nest. These are the ace space-savers that happily huddle up close when not in use, to make more room on floors and shelves.

The Tip Ton, moulded all-of-a-piece from polypropylene (in eight colours) is a fresh way of sitting that is very good for you, says Vitra, its manufacturer. Tilt the chair just a little forward on its rocker, and you'll find it stays there. New Swiss research shows that this "forward-leaning sitting position" straightens the spine, making back and tummy muscles work harder, which increases body oxygen to aid concentration. And it's the first ever rocker that stacks.

Stacking stuff itself isn't new, of course - just think back to school halls. Some great 20th-century classics were stackers, like the Fifties Arne Jacobsen chair that Christine Keeler posed on (though actually that was a copy, according to the V&A). "Such designs are very popular again," says Chrystina Schmidt, creative director of the Skandium shops. "Stackability was an essential part of modernism - designs were so radical people thought at first that they were odd and ugly." The Scandis are very good at stacking. Indeed, the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed iconic birch stacking stools in the Thirties, when his wife Aino created an equally classic stacking tumbler. Post-war came Kaj Franck's stacking Teema tableware for Iittala (also Finnish), all fresh and covetable for a new generation at Skandium.

But modern technology for moulded plastic is updating shapes for a snazzy, seamless one-piece look. London architect David Chipperfield has fashioned a seemingly simple seat for Alessi (on Brook Street) in polypropylene and glass fibre - the Piana, in seven strong colours. Its clever concealed mechanism folds it perfectly flat, and a horizontal stack can then hang on a wall hook - "modern, comfortable and robust," says Chipperfield. And the minimal Miura stacking stool (by German Konstantin Grcic) is also made of one-piece polyprop in snappy shades such as orange, red and cobalt blue. Its stack is angular and sculptural.

Champion stacker Lego (as per that giant Christmas tree at St Pancras) has spawned a set of big storage units in jaunty colours (from allupandon.co.uk). On a smaller scale are Lempi stacking goblets by Swedish Matti Klenell (at Skandium) who says, "like most urban dwellers I am always short of space, and wine glasses are the ones I use the most". Just in time for festive baking is an ingenious five-piece Eazistore set of cookware by Stellar, where everything, even a bun tin, fits inside a roasting pan. And wardrobes that take up too much room can be purged with stacking storage from the Holding Company, whose latest wheeze is a transparent stacking "shoe cubby" which can stack below hanging skirts, trousers and shirts.

Where urban homes are cramped and tight, these are the designs that really do stack up.

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