2023-11-13 13:00:00
Behind the Alki furniture factory, located in Itxassou, in the Basque Country, there is a social and environmental project. Moreover, the five friends who launched it in 1981 chose to give it an alternative economic form, that of a cooperative. The initial idea? Revitalize the local fabric of this green corner on the border with Spain, create jobs, put the spotlight back on know-how by opening a sustainable factory around the production of oak furniture from sustainably managed sectors. Despite a fire that devastated the entire workshop a few years later, the committed members of the cooperative rebuilt everything in a few weeks in order to restart production.
In the 1980s, Alki became a reference in wooden office furniture, then also expanded into wrought iron. The meeting with the industrial designer Jean Louis Iratzoki gave new life to the cooperative. From his creativity was born the first Emea collection, with a chair whose clean lines serve to highlight the nobility of solid wood. Other pieces will follow, increasingly drawing the contours of the Alki signature, which means “chair” in Basque. The cooperative then launched into external collaborations by soliciting creators like Samuel Accoceberry and Patrick Norguet, who brought another perspective on its know-how.
The manufacture now works with institutions such as Les Sources de Caudalie, Mucem and the Louis Vuitton Foundation, as well as with individuals. The perfect illustration of these different audiences? The birth of a chair designed by Patrick Jouin. Designed for the oval room of the Richelieu site of the National Library of France, which reopened in 2022 after several years of work, the Orria seat, “page of a book” in Basque, is now available in solid wood and leather for the general public. Witness to the success of this committed project (Akli has, among other things, joined the United Nations global pact and works with 100% renewable energies), the Basque cooperative will move at the end of the year to a new workshop of 8,000 m² in Larressore, thus doubling its production area.
Orria chair, from €1,530, www.alki.fr
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