Toledo: the classic café chair reimagined by Jorge Pensi in the 1980s

Designed between 1986 and 1988 by Jorge Pensi, the Toledo chair emerges as a miniature architectural gesture: cast entirely in aluminium, its silhouette evokes the framework of a living skeleton, with ribs unfolding in elongated, slotted sheets. Its clean, ergonomic lines combine functionality, weather resistance, lightness, and stackability, all with artisanal refinement. The chair rests on four anodised aluminium tube legs, discreetly joined, allowing the form to flow without unnecessary adornment, revealing its technical and aesthetic originality.

Inspiration and origins

Trained in architecture and deeply influenced by Charles Eames, Pensi sought to create a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic Spanish café chair. The slatted backrest recalls the layered armour of samurai warriors, while the name Toledo reinforces a sense of strength and permanence—an homage to steel and defensive structure without compromising visual lightness.

Pensi’s aim was to design a lightweight chair without compromising its structure. Observing a meat slicer made of aluminium, he realized it was the ideal material to achieve this goal. And so, this lightweight shell, practical and weather-resistant, was born from the dialogue between desire and reality, as he himself would say.

The Toledo chair received the main recognitions of Spanish design in 1988: First Prize SIDI Selection and ADI-FAD Silver Delta. In addition, it was included in the collection of the Vitra Design Museum; its manufacturer Amat‑3 received the National Design and Innovation Award in 1998, recognising innovation and manufacturing excellence.

Amat‑3, the first manufacturer of Pensi’s Toledo chair, was a Spanish family-run company specialised in metal furniture, which produced the Toledo until the factory’s closure.

Rebirth with Resol

In 2015, Resol, a leading company in outdoor furniture in Spain, contacted Pensi and acquired the rights to continue producing the aluminium Toledo chair. Later, a single-piece polypropylene version was launched, “Toledo Aire”. This reedition, presented at the 2015 Milan Furniture Fair and awarded the ADI-FAD Silver Delta that same year, democratises design without renouncing the original spirit.

The Toledo is more than a chair: it is a poem in aluminium, an artefact that breathes history and promise. Its light and firm body defies the passage of time and the clear seasons, urban and outdoor, resistance and beauty. Like an echo of the walls of its namesake, it will endure, unassumingly, as a vestige of human ingenuity.

Toledo Chair.
Design: Jorge Pensi (1986–88).
First manufacturer: Amat‑3 (Spain), until closure in the 90s.
Reedition: Resol, since 2015 (Aluminium & Toledo Aire PP).
Awards: First Prize SIDI Selection 1988 for best furniture piece – ADI-FAD Silver Delta 1988 — Inclusion in the Knoll Studio catalogue of Knoll International USA, New York. 1989 — Design Auswahl 1990 by the Design Center Stuttgart, Germany — Inclusion in the permanent collection of the Museum Für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne, Germany. 1990 — Inclusion in Sitz-Avantgarde by the Design Center of Nordrhein Westfalen, Germany. 1991 — Inclusion in the permanent collection of the Vitra Design Museum — 1991. Inclusion in the Industrial Design Fund of the National Museum of Decorative Arts. Barcelona. 1995 — Inclusion in Baden-Württemberg International Design Award — 1996/97 Longevity by the Design Center Stuttgart. Germany — Inclusion in Design Barcelona, of the 20th Century. BID Cultural Centre, Washington DC. USA. 1997 — Inclusion in Baden-Württemberg International Design Award — 1996/97 Longevity by the Design Center Stuttgart. Germany — Henie Onstad Art Centre, 1999 Oslo. Norway — Inclusion in the exhibition “Aluminum by Design”, 2000 Carnegie Museum of Art, USA. — Inclusion in the exhibition “Take a Seat”, 2003 Vitra Design. Museum Berlin. — Inclusion as a symbolic and iconic product, Design Museum, Design Hub, Barcelona 2017.

2018 ADI-FAD Silver Delta Toledo Aire — Toledo Aire Good Design 2018. Chicago Athenaeum — Interior Design Magazine HiP Award. 2018. Toledo Aire Chair, Chicago.

Photos of the original Toledo chair, manufactured by Amat‑3, courtesy of Fenix Originals.

Pensi Design Studio

Jorge Pensi was born in Buenos Aires in 1946, where he studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires. But it was in Barcelona, a city he chose as his creative homeland in 1977, where he found fertile ground to develop his own language. A formal idiom that is precise, sober and profoundly emotional, one that has placed his work among the great references of international design.

In 1984, he founded Pensi Design Studio in the heart of the Gothic Quarter, which has since become a laboratory of ideas where industrial design, ephemeral architecture, lighting and furniture converge, always guided by a clear philosophy: to create objects that bring beauty, serenity and meaning, and that withstand the passage of time beyond trends. See full biography.

Project by Pensi Design Studio