Innovative furniture design

Shapes and forms matter. In the pattern-seeking modules of the human brain, shapes and forms communicate; what they communicate to you will be a product of the culture and territory in which you were formed. For some reason culture is particularly when shapes are combined into more complex configurations. The one exception is organic forms, especially plants. Their symbolism tends to be more universal as they are seen to be pleasing and comforting by all. To us, a plant's asymmetry conveys spontaneity. The history of plants being used in the sculptural forms and motifs of many traditions goes back eons. These motifs were seen as a way of expressing everything from long life, healing, renewal, to fertility, strength and longevity. Perhaps for their medicinal as well as poisonous characteristic––life giving and life ending––plants supernatural project supernatural qualities in traditional art like magic, prophecy, and all seeing also charge traditional plant symbolisms in art.

Organic forms can also have a transformative role in the context of a design. As in the Sebastian Errazuriz Tree Table below, the mix of the organic with the industrial in the material and shape of the branch table base has the effect of softening the industrial-ness of glass.

Korean designer Chul An Kwak's eschews the static. He found inspiration in the movement of a running horse but knew he wouldn't get there with straight planar legs and right angles. Through his use of sculpted wood, the designer wanted to convey not just dynamic motion but dynamic emotion. The table have feeling of unresolved tension, as if it trying to escape from the room,  a horse galloping to freedom.

Below, another Korean, artist MyeongBeom Kim takes the concept to the extreme, in the case of the carved out chair from the tree he plays with industrializing the chair's organic source material, and in the urinal piece below that, nature beautifully blooms from the abundance of human waste. Below Kim's work, nature—either as a single element or as a faux jungle—projects a sense of vigor and hope into a stark hardscape or an otherwise barren vista.

Below, Kim may be commenting on the diminishing natural environment, our profligate use of water, and unsustainable production of waste.

Above, the accidental forest; below, the domestic micro-jungle; and below next, an integration of the urban with what it replaced.

A forest appears to be grow from the model's head like Athena out of the forehead of Zeus. Below, nature manipulated by nature as if they were bespoke creations made to order. At bottom: The building's glass gives back some of the sky.

Plastic, the word has become the very symbol of superficiality, the excess of our modern industrialism. But it wasn't always so. Once, plastic was the possibility and triumph of the Jet-age.  Even French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes couldn't help but rhapsodize on its romantic power: "[Plastic] is in essence the stuff of alchemy... more than a substance, plastic is the very idea of infinite transformation."

Another who was seduced by plastic, clear thermoplastic in this case, was Charles Hollis Jones. Jones was both a pioneer and a prodigy. Interested at an early age in the material qualities of glass, the advances in acrylic technology during World War II, especially in its use in aviation, made acrylic an industrial material worthy of designer crushes. For Jones, its transmissivity, i.e. transparency with a low reflectivity, were the qualities worthy of career long affair.

See our earlier post on acrylic.

His work with the material began at the dawn of the Rock and Roll Age in 1961 but didn't hit its full stride until the arrival of the Disco era of 70s. His work would find a roster of marquee champions including John Lautner, Raymond Loewy, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tennessee Williams, and others.

By the early seventies Jones's stools were in the Playboy Club and his vanity tables in the Mondrian Hotel. His work had risen to the archtype of evil cool appropriate enough for the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever." But this success brought imitators selling downgraded knock-offs that would scratch and cloud. The effect would be devastating on the acrylic furniture market, by no fault of Jones it'd go from swank to stank within a decade.

While plastic furniture—for better or worse—has become omnipresent, clear acrylic wouldn't make a significant comeback until many years later. Even now, at the relatively spry age of 67, Jones is still working and very much dedicated to the material.

Beyond design, Jones also pioneered techniques in manufacturing. He developed a method for joining large acrylic castings in perfectly transparent and seamless joints as well as a proprietary technique for joining acrylic to metal without screws or fasteners.

We are pattern seeking animals. We love our symbols and icons. Before there was shared religion or tribal customs that provided the arteries that kept humanity in a shared cultural stream. Doesn't it make sense that in our contemporary culture, so centered on commodification, that iconic furniture would prove to be so integral?

Japanese artist Makoto Azuma has been described as a "florist who creates punk art using plants and flowers." Here, he uses something like AstroTurf to cover a classic Aeron chair for Herman Miller.

Sori Yanagi's Butterfly Stool reworked from recycled cardboard boxes by Kin ichi Ogata:

An old classic, the Windsor chair, remade with new sustainable materials–Bamboo–by Bo Reudler.

Two new takes on the popular Thonet chair: Top, #18 by Matthias Pliessnig, and bottom, Mike Kann for Studio 801.

Thonet in the colors of M&Ms:

Two retakes on an Arne Jacobsen classic:

Studded:

Eames chairs are so ubiquitous that they certainly don't need reworking to rekindle interest, but some game designers decided to take a few swipes at it anyway:

An Eiffel Tower chair with kitschy graphics:

The Rocker Arm chairs feature unique hand drawn graphics by illustrator Mike Perry. Each chair is drawn to order.

A couple of irreverent hacks:

An Urban Outfitters version of the Eiffel with some added notches and a few less bends:

The ever popular Eames Lounge chair featuring some experiments with upholstery:

Peiter Maes references Eames:

More Eames, this time with more muscular legs:

Eames done with a Rococo twist by Perter Shire:

Elephantine chairs in the Le Corbusier style:

Originally designed most likely as a way to extend the use of precious timber, pergolas—going back at least as long as the Egyptians, say 3000 years give or take—were in their earliest forms coverings with spaced slats. Over these slats were grown vines or fruit trees. These covered seating areas would used in the more temperate regions as a cool respite for the sedentary pursuit of watching the wildlife from your back porch, de rigueur for the noble class of 17th century England.

Here, paradise and cocktails under the logs:

If their design began as a practical matter we've so long ago grown enamored by their sheer object beauty of the things that their essential function hardly matters anymore. We just love to look at them. Most of the great gardens have at least one if not more.

A stone cold rush of rustic with a mixer of Mediterranean:

Wine and pyramids under the shady green:

Detached from the natural garden and incorporated into the paved one, pergolas are often used as a poolside shelter.

The word pergola, originally from the Latin, literally refered to a "covered eave." It is part of a tradition that traveled the world. Moroccan style, below:

It's been argued that it was the Italians during the Renaissance who first  incorporated the shelters as free standing elements in their formal gardens. In Italian pergola means "a close walk of boughs."

Here, a constructed forest featuring roses and waterlilies.

As interpreted by Andrea Cochran:

Cloth will work nicely, too.

A more finished rendition from architect Daniel J. Lieberman:

Small is also good.

The room without walls:

See Part 1 here.

This is not a pipe: Magritte called it The Treachery of Images. More treachery below, taking on the same idea only this time with chairs. Chairs to confound your concept of what a chair should look like.

As we've noted before, when it comes to chair design—traditionally—it's mostly a conservative medium. Forms are followed from history, sometimes very ancient history, and tend to get repeated in endless iterations. New tends don't enter into the design vernacular much. And how long will this thrall to all things mid-century go on?

Be that as it may, let's look at chairs that draw their design inspiration from somewhere other than chair history: Chairs that take their influence from other parts of the design world. Something of the unexpected: Not always or necessarily beautiful, but different.

Not sure if these wall-mounted chairs above are even usable in this configuration but the concept is certainly... interesting.

The Beehive chair from Kiwi designer Graham Roebuck. The materials are described thusly: Made of Lakepine Zero low emitting MDF and polished in beeswax to the edges, while tepid White Formica high pressure laminate envelopes the perpendicular faces of the piece.

The Bloom Chair by Kenneth Cobonpue; Here's how one seller describes it: Deep soft folds of handmade microfibre stitched with a steel base in different fabric colors that pop! Very comfortable and very artsy. Or kind of like a meat-eating orchid, as someone once said.

This bowl-with-a-hole chair is from Dublin based Tierney Haines Architects:

Where they found the inspiration: Donald Knorr's award winning Knoll 132 from 1950, designed to be low cost with steel legs and an aluminum seat. The chair has been discontinued.

The Ball chair by Finn Eero Aarnio, ca. 1963:

An even more flowery take on the Saarinen Tulip chair, this one from Australian designer Sydney Feathersone, 1969: the Stem chair.

This Guadi chair from Dutch designer Bam Geenen takes inspiration from its namesake basing it upon the master's use of arches for optimum strength.

Here, barely a chair from Oki Sato by way of Nendo.

The Vermelha chair from the Brazilian design team of the Campana Brothers. The chair is a steel structure with hand woven and dyed cotton rope.

Designer Yangsoo Pyo created these Afro chairs out of steel wire coiled (think two-ring binder springs) into a giant Brillo pad. Despite its appearance, it's claimed that the chair is actually quite comfortable.

Oskar Zieta's Chippensteel chairs:

The chair as a Buick: The Maxell chair by Harald Belker. You won't be surprised to learn that Belker actually designs cars for Porsche and Mercedes Benz. The chair was reportedly inspired by the Maxell ads with the guy being blown away in the Le Corbusier chair.

Another barely there chair, this one designed by Verner Panton, another take on a chair done for Herman Miller in the 70s. Panton is considered to be one of Denmark's most influential 20th century furniture designers. As Denmark was one of the apogees of the Mid-Century, this is no small claim.

The Lodge chair by Baltasar Portillo:

The crouching Z-Chair by—who else?—Zaha Hadid:

More to come in Part 3.

It seems the hue we think of as teal tends to be more of an umbrella term than a specific color. We know it's generally considered blue-green but it can run the gamut of light blue to greenish gray. One person's teal may be another person's turquoise.

As colors tend to have faddish runs in design culture, teal had a brief one of its own recently. Teal is also a classic hue that never goes out of fashion.

The word itself comes from the Teal duck which displays the color on its head. Also below, a tropical sea, peacock feather, satellite view of a plankton bloom, and an agate rock give further proof of nature's own predilection for the hue.

In an environment of neutrals teal bangs up nicely.

Subject to the cycles of fashion Teal is also a classic that never goes completely out of fashion. Land's End and Abercrombie & Fitch will always have space for teal in their catalogs.

Part of teal's success as a fashion color has to do with its complimentary effect on the natural pinks of light skin. As you can see above, it seems to work with skin of any tone.

More teal and neutrals interplay:

Teal pumping up the vibe of an office space.

In a more traditional, low key setting:

And the slightly more garish:

In art, unlike design, the line dividing great work from the merely popular is most often drawn by our aesthetic institutions: Critics, academics, historians, and collectors—collectors, especially. After that, if a work can withstand the vagaries of the market and time then it may, at last, be something for the ages. What's conspicuously missing from this list is the public. In the final tally, they matter little.

But what if the mass market was the decider? Using reproduction numbers as a gauge, choosing a winner wouldn't be much of a contest.

On the left below, a Christ by painter Warner Sallman (that's his pic above, right) from 1940. He was once declared "the best known artist of the century" by The New York Times. His painting has been reproduced more than 500 million times to date. (During WW II alone, one printing shop kept two shifts of press laborers running on this image alone.)

On the right, La Gioconde, the best known painting in the world, Christendom and beyond, and source material for incalculable mountains of kitsch. (Leonardo's pic is above, left.)

As for critical acclaim, that's another matter. Just for argument's sake, let's say we let the pointy heads of the institution decide: In 2004 a group of 500 selected British art world professionals were asked to vote on what they thought was the most influential artwork of the 20th century. Their winner?

The inventor of conceptual art and the self-proclaimed de-deifier of the artist, Marcel Duchamp and his infamous Fountain. (You were thinking Norman Rockwell perhaps?)

Design, on the other hand, needs more than critical acclaim. It needs sales. (As Henrik Fiskar said design that isn't profitable we call art.) However the critics and taste-makers enthuse about a particular designer object, without public support it's dead as Dada. Still, there's no reason to fear a cultural takeover by bean bags and barcaloungers: While the plebeians may get the final word on pop culture, aesthetic culture is another matter entirely.

This may go a ways to explain why furniture design remains fixed in the traditional and why we can't seem to move away from mid-century. As we've discussed before, most chairs inhabiting our spaces these days have pedigrees extending back generations if not thousands of years. Prior to mid-century, the last furniture revolution coincided with the rise of industrialization and the materials it made available. Since then, the tried and true have prevailed. With few exceptions, the edgy rarely finds its way to our dinner tables or living rooms.

To wit: Phillipe Starke's Louis Ghost Chair. A streamlined dining table version of the Louis XIV warhorse reimagined in plexi.

As flexible as it is invisible.

F

Below, Starke's creation infiltrates the set of Gossip Girl.

Given the mantle of founder of American Modernism, George Nelson's designs manage to work slightly outside the sphere of the traditional form.

Below, the Coconut chair from 1955 (still available from Herman Miller): Nelson also gave us the first modular storage system and a forerunner of systems furniture.

Nelson argued that a design could push all extremes except the one that sacrifices its humanity: [A designer] must first make a radical, conscious break with all values he identifies as antihuman... total design is nothing more or less than a process of relating everything to everything." There, you see: It's easy.

Above, the Marshmallow sofa by George Nelson and Irving Harper from 1956:

Below, decorator Billy Baldwin's famous slipper chair: A crisp and prim accent chair that takes its upholstery to the floor. There's a reason for that. Baldwin believed exposed legs gave a room the appearance of restlessness. Furniture should be designed first and foremost for comfort. The Slipper was designed for short term seating, low enough to make it easy for putting on shoes, no arms for easy in and out access, and look that was sharp and plush.

Below, the Cotton Candy version currently available at Urban Outfitters (with its  un-Baldwinesque exposed legs). The legacy of the chair also continues at Target, Crate and Barrel, and Pottery Barn. The Slipper is still hot, it seems.

One of the founders of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius interprets the Chesterfield. The style, named after England's Earls of Chesterfield, goes back over 200 years and describes seating with arms and back of the same height.

A more recent reworking of the design concept in the B & B Italia Tulip chair:

The Chesterfield, the traditional and a modern reimagining:

In an earlier post we discussed Harry Bertoia's Diamond chair, a chair known for its innovative use of steel wire. Other versions would include the Bird chair with ottoman and the Café chair.

Bertoia was also a college classmate of Florence Knoll. It was Knoll who offered to manufacture Bertoia's chair. His pioneering work would bring him many laurels including an AIA Gold Medal and Designer of the Year.

Below, the Bird chair under a disguise of upholstery:

Bertoia was a multi-hyphenated sculptor, furniture designer, creator of wedding rings for Charles and Ray Eames, and college lecturer. (Bertoia also created a series of 10 Sonambient record albums based on the sounds of his wire Sounding Sculptures. See a demonstration of the sound here.) The Diamond chair has been in production since 1952.

Below, fiberglass Shell side chairs:

An important part of the mid-century style explosion was Danish Modern, a form epitomized by countrymen Arne Jacobsen (featured here), Finn Juhl (as seen here), Arne Vodder, and Arne Hovmand-Olsen. All four designers would enjoy international recognition and all owe a large debt to their forbear, Kaare Klint.

Below, Klint's Faaborg chair.

Klint's Propeller stool, owing much to the Egyptians:

While Klint and the Danish Modernists agreed with much that was going with Bauhaus, there were stark differences. The Bauhaus style stressed form and function as a singularity, minimalistic design without adornment, and industrial materials, especially steel tubing and glass. Bauhaus also represented a conscious break from Art Nouveau which had begun to fade with the beginning of the 20th century. Klint and other Danes were less inclined to let go of Nouveau's naturalistic motifs and organic forms. They preferred wood as a material and hand-crafted over the industrial as well as having design respond to the human body and its behaviors more than efficiency of industrial fabrication.

The Safari Chair from 1933:

The Safari reimagined (with a little Chinese style thrown in) from 1984 by Dutch designer Ruud-Jan Kokke:

Below, a Klint Lounger:

Bauhaus was founded in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art, the former directed by Belgian Henry van de Velde. Velde would also be the Bauhaus school's first director, a job he would be forced from as the nationalists rose to power in Germany. Van de Velde would choose Walter Gropius to be his successor. The change over would also bring an end to the influence of Nouveau.

Henry van de Velde's work would bridge Nouveau and Bauhaus:

The chair on the left is from a pre-Bauhaus period of 1897; On the right, Velde eschews the organic for a more industrial look:

More chairs to come in Part 4.

Gray is the yin and yang altogether. It's the feminine in the way it nurtures and supports surrounding colors. It's also the masculine, an ominous sky and battleships. In the tonal palette it represents Switzerland: Neutral, cool, subdued, sophisticated, elegant, corporate, and serious.

In the right hands it is grace, as in the designs of David Hicks (the two below) which are nothing like corporate.

G

Gray socializes well with other colors. It is a peacemaker. It pulls back bright colors and grounds darks and lights. It's most agreeable: In a family of purple, pink, and yellow it is a kind of visual middle child.

It's the epitome of diversity and the ultimate equalizer. It is also bold without being assertive. An abused gray can easily turn into a drone: drab, dull, and dead. Yet within it is always the potential for the spectacular.

It is simple, understated elegance, refined enough to never call attention to itself.

In the garden, it stands back and launches the green and red forward.

It makes even a hand-made look natural in the landscape.

Paint the walls or swath a fabric around a room and it can gush as much color as you like. But this isn't about that. This is about choosing a whisper or a breath, an accent to stand apart.

In design, like art and politics, power can come from the margins.

Here, the blue flowers make a brilliant and contained explosion.

A suggestion of a tint from the windows adds a low chorus to the blue of the sky.

Tomorrow, the table could be red. But for today, it's blue.

Beneath the cabinet there's another margin of opportunity.

The quasi-blue of Mexican Blue Palms at LAX, and the Hilton Hotel in Pattaya, Thailand, with intermittent radiating blue cubes.

Long ago, before the living rooms of America were designed to funnel all attention into home entertainment centers, the social space of well-designed homes would have inhabitants focus on each other rather than appliances. A quintessential example is this seating platform by architect Paul Rudolph from 1955.

Just by the fact we descend into the space transforms the atmosphere into something more rarefied. It practically gushes with implied intimacy.

Perhaps the most iconic of conversation pits, below, from Eero Saarinen’s Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, built in 1957.

The pedigree for the pit may come from the Middle East or North Africa. The Moroccan trend of the early naughties brought a resurgence of conversation spaces, especially outdoor.

Below, a more recent interpretation created by March Studio, Australia.

And more classics of the mid-century:

Another of more recent vintage, below a Chicago townhouse by Roger Hirsch Architect.

As seating, this stark vision in triangles may be more appropriate for lectures on particle physics or hostile take-overs than soft-spoken candlelit conversations.

This example, with its resplendent views of the outdoors and pillowy comforts, invites much more than conversations with its provocative mirrored ceiling.

Thank you to the Ouno design blog for material and inspiration.