Take a seat
MANILA, Philippines - You see them in designer hotel lobbies, in hip homes and window displays. They’re icons of design that people collect for enormous amounts of money.
The book 1000 Chairs by Charlotte and Peter Fiell, published by Taschen, is a guide to the best chairs ever made since 1916. Why put so much importance on this piece of furniture? British architect Peter Smithson said in 1986, “It could be said that when we design a chair, we make a society and city in miniature.”
The authors say, “The persuasiveness of a chair depends on the clarity of its rhetoric. The clearer the argument, the more likely it is that connections will be made, either consciously or subconsciously, and it is the quality of these connections, more than anything else, that determines the ultimate success of a chair.”
Arne Jacobsen
The Series 7 is one of the most commercially successful chair programs ever produced. Jacobsen’s approach to the complex moulding of the continuous plywood seat and back was influenced by the Eameses’ earlier designs.
Frank O. Gehry
The “Easy Edges” series comprised 14 pieces of cardboard furniture. To increase the strength and resilience of their constructions, the layers of cardboard were laminated at right angles to one another. Initially conceived as low-cost furniture, these designs were so immediately successful that Gehry withdrew them from production after only three months, fearing that his ascendary as a popular furniture designer would distract him from realizing his potential as an artist.
Piero Fornasetti
The eccentric spirit of Fornasetti’s designs, with their surreal and exuberant trompe-l’oeil decoration, influenced the Italian Anti-Design movement of subsequent decades.
Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret & Perriand
The first systemized tubular steel designs by Le Corbusier’s studio appeared in 1928 and were described as “equipment de l’habitation.” The best known of this furniture group is the B306 which as an ergonomically resolved form.
Marc Newson
Marc Newson’s designs are characterized by strong sculptural forms with an innate biomorphism. The form of his “Orgone” chaise is reminiscent of a surfboard — a testament to Newson’s Australian origins — while his “Felt” chair has a powerful anthromorphism. Sacrificing comfort to aesthetics, the “Lockheed Lounge” was influenced by the riveted structure of aircraft and stylistically reflects 1930s’ streamlining. It is very expensive due to its laborious and time-consuming method of manufacture.
George Nelson
Like his clock designs, the form of Nelson’s “Marshmallow” sofa has been exploded into separate parts. The bold color scheme, which emphasized this separateness, and the geometry of the sofa, predicted Pop design.
Charles & Ray Eames
Submitted by the Eameses for the Museum of Modern Art’s “International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design” in 1948, this highly abstract organic design proved too expensive to manufacture.
Eero Saarinen
Plastics technology precluded Saarinen from achieving a single-material, single-form chair. The “Pedestal Group” did, however, fulfill his objective of cleaning up the “slum of legs” in domestic interiors.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
The famous Barcelona chair MR90 was designed by Mies van der Rohe for use in the German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exhibition Barcelona. Opulent, yet imparting a modern appearance, the chair’s form was based on the sella curulis, a Roman Magistrate’s stool.
One of Philippe Starck’s best-known designs, the “Costes” was originally designed for the Café Costes in Paris. It was designed with three legs so that waiters at the café would trip up only half as many times as usual.
Philippe Starck
The stackable “Olly Tango” and “Miss Trip” mark a new maturity in Starck’s work which has given rise to particularly elegant and rational forms.
Gerrit Rietveld
The 40-degree angle of the “Zig-Zag” chair’s cantilever can be seen as a response to Theo van Doesburg’s call in 1924 for the introduction of oblique lines to resolve the tension between vertical and horizontal elements.
