PERFECT HOMES MAGAZINE ( Editor Stan Israel) by Stan Israel | Page 172
Extempore
trendsetter and classic
If Extremis can take credit for anything, it is
the enormous boost it gave to outdoor design
furniture in the last decade. In the mid nineties,
that market was not nearly as large as now. In its
early years, Extremis had to grow step by step
and Dirk Wynants had to concentrate more on
the business side than on the design side of
his young company, which targeted multiple
foreign markets right from the start. After the
launch of Gargantua in 1994, it would take
Extremis four years to introduce the Extempore
range, which has in the meantime become a
real design classic signed Arnold Merckx.
Comprehensive range
If you take a contemporary view of Extempore,
you probably wouldn’t find it very innovative. In
1998 however, combining wood and aluminium
was really trendsetting. Innovation was
furthermore subtly present in other aspects
of the range. Extempore is for instance a
comprehensive and modular outdoor furniture
range offering solutions for really all day-today functionalities such as sitting, dining, lying,
relaxing, reading, etc.
Its major innovation however is invisible to
the end user: With the Extempore range the
production of waste material has been kept
to a minimum. Each (wooden) element can be
used on any product within the range. Originally
the wood furthermore originated from areas
managed by nature conservation organisations
and nowadays Extremis still exclusively uses
FSC labelled wood. Also in this regard Extremis
was truly trendsetting…
tools for togetherness