While these look neat, AL is already 100% recyclable. So why spend 350$ for an AL chair when you can buy a different one for 25$ at home depot and STILL recycle it at the end of its life. 350$ is just an absurd price for a hunk of AL.

Holy cow, that looks like possibly the most uncomfortable chair ever made. The entire back support is a single right-angled metal bar across mid-back? Has this guy ever heard of lumbar support?

Al are not recycled, however they are downgradable. Say when you are done with the Al used on aircrafts, they can not be reused to make another aircraft. but they definitely can use in your pop cans.

You have to wonder if these will still hit the market now that the price of AL - recycled or virgin - has gone so crazily high.

They're hand-made in the USA from a company that pays a living wage...they use 80% recycled material and they're beautiful. I think they get super-credit for making these.

Anything that's 25 bucks probably still has battery acid on it.

Cracker: that's all well and good. I make a living wage too. Unfortunately, my "living wage" prevents me from spending 350$ or $700 on what looks to me like the most uncomfortable chair ever. It's not a peice of art, it's nothing groundbreaking, yet they want 350$ for it? That's insane. People can go on and on about how awesome and "green" these guys are, but they won't make any dent in the real issue by charging prices like that.

The comment about it being "LEED-compliant" needs to be edited. LEED is a system for buildings only. Products cannot be LEED compliant, or certified, or whatever terminology they try to use. This is marketing spin that I see manufacturers use too often. There is NO SUCH thing as a LEED compliant product. Please don't contibute to the greenwashing that is already rampant.

Keeeeeee-RIST! How many people who read this blog can afford $350 dining room chairs?

All of my dining room chairs are recycled - they were trash picks from the roadside or came from yard sales or were just handmedowns from friends of friends who were moving and didn't feel like taking them with. Recycling doesn't have to be impossibley expensive, even if $350 recycled chairs might have a certain cachet that dumpster dove chairs don't.

"Holy cow, that looks like possibly the most uncomfortable chair ever made."

Phillipe Starke may associate himself with "LEED compliant" greenwashing, but I'd be surprised if the chair was actually uncomfortable to sit on. And as it's not actually in stores yet I doubt Universe Man is in a fair position to actually say whether the chair is comfortable or not.

Designers go nuts about chairs, a book I recently saw shows that any designer worth his salt has designed one, so for Starke to conceive one that will be compared against his peer's work he must have considered its ergonomics.

Well, it may be elegant, comfortable and recyclable, but that does not make it an icon.