WORDS Celeste Jacobs IMAGES Henrique Wilding
Hula, Haldane Martin’s outdoor furniture range, echoes his desire to design meaningful objects that create a sense of belonging in time and place.
While designing a restaurant in Botswana, Haldane saw the need for contemporary outdoor furniture and Hula was his first outdoor range. Named after the dining chair’s hula hoop shape, it was inspired by the garden furniture found in many South African homes and will, Haldane hopes, remind people of childhood moments spent outside.
The rest of the playful, nostalgic collection emerged organically and his favourite piece, The Hula Love Seat, is a metropolitan outdoor bench. Haldane tried to capture the essence of each design in its name:
Plat-O is a play on the word plateau. The tables are slick with sleek ‘o’ shapes – round or at-oval table tops on geometric at-bar bases.
The Cha Cha occasional tables actually look like they’re dancing when you move around them because of the line moiré patterns that Haldane created by spacing the wire bars so close together.
Polka is a feminine outdoor table collection with polka-dot swirling patterns on the tabletop. It lets rain through, which makes it functional for outdoor use, but it’s a great beautifying feature, too.
Papa Sun is Haldane’s latest outdoor sofa collection. It is named after the round cane Malaysian Papasan chairs that were popular in Western culture in the ’50s. Designed to suit the South African lifestyle, the furniture is made in Cape Town from stainless steel tubing with solid rods forming the curved ribs. It’s a luxe urban-chic lounger that handles African outdoor environments with ease. There’s a Papa Sun day bed coming soon, a Hula lounger to add to the Hula family, and another outdoor sofa collection on the horizon.
With worldwide shipping, you can shop the collections on the design studio’s website or by sending the team an email.