The pieces were created by Osko+Deichmann with the same techniques used for the studio’s previous Kink chairs and the colourful Straw chairs, which now come in a smaller size plus a bar stool and lounge chair.
Straw chair, lounge chair and bar stool by Osko+Deichmann
They are made of lacquered, galvanised steel so are suitable for indoor and outdoor use. The designers have also added a three-legged table to the collection.
Weighing just 800 grams, the chair is handmade from party balloons filled with compressed air. The balloons are then wrapped in strips of carbon fibre and hardened with epoxy resin.
The netting for the seat is made from a grid of carbon fibre that is also hardened with resin.
“[The Carbon Balloon Chair] was conceived by Marcel as a challenge to all designers to create the world’s lightest chair,” said the studio. “Working with carbon is favoured by Marcel for its weight minimization possibilities. The chair requires fewer materials, generates less waste and is highly durable.”
The balloons are clearly visible in the design, which is reminiscent of the designer’s breakthrough Knotted Chair, for which Wanders used epoxy resin to harden macramé thread used for the frame.
The Knotted Chair was a lightweight design, also hardened with resin, that marked Wanders’ international breakthrough in 1996
Marcel Wanders: Pinned Up at the Stedelijk comprises a collection of Wanders’ work from the late 1980s to the present day. More than 400 objects are on display in the museum’s new lower-level gallery space, including furniture, lamps, cutlery, wallpaper, packaging and jewellery. The show will run until 15 June 2014.
Stockholm 2014: student designer Nanna Kiil is showing a chair that looks like it’s dressed in a fat suit at the Greenhouse showcase of young talent as part of the Stockholm Furniture Fair.
Nanna Kiil modelled the Flesh Chair on an obese body. “The shape is inspired by overweight humans,” she told Dezeen. “I wanted to work with that aesthetic in a positive way.”
She used memory foam covered in a light pink textile to create the flabby appearance of the armchair. A wrinkled breed of dog was also taken as a reference when forming the folds and creases. “I was really inspired by the shar pei dog, where the fat is something I find really attractive,” said Kiil.
The foam was scrunched and wrinkled around a metal frame then sewn together along the edges. Wooden appendages are attached to the end of the frame and poke from the lumpy material to imitate hands and feet.
The bent plywood back of this chair by Danish design brand ShapingYourDay slots into a hole in the seat and is attached with two screws (+ slideshow).
Designers Karina Mencke and Marcus Vagnby created the chair as part of a collection that also includes barstools, benches, dining tables and coffee tables for their own label, ShapingYourDay.
The chair’s rounded backrest narrows to a tongue-like section that curves underneath the seat.
A visible brass screw fixes the back section to a loop that curves up from the rear of the seat, and another screw underneath locks the two pieces in place.
“The Viggo chair has a two-shell structure, which gives the chair its high seating comfort and distinctive design expression, different from all other chairs,” said the designers.
The chair is made from veneered plywood, in the tradition of some of the classic chairs created by Danish designers such as Arne Jacobsen and Grete Jalk in the 1950s and 1960s.
Padding can be added to the seat and back and upholstered in various fabrics.
An accompanying dining table has legs formed from two pieces of curving wood fixed together with brass screws, which match those used on the chairs.
ShapingYourDay launched the Viggo collection at the DesignTrade event in Copenhagen earlier this month.
As designer you don’t contribute to the big picture in every project, but once in a while you realize that you actually made a difference, you added something new, something meaningful.
We feel that it is the case with our new Viggo chair and furniture collection.
And what is the chance, to actually obtain added seating comfort and a unique design expression to a product like a chair? See for you self, in our opinion this is a new chair classic!
Words from the designers who started it all: We have worked with product design and architecture for numerous customers worldwide for more than a decade. In 2012 we started the brand ShapingYourDay, as a space for us to create and produce unique and functional lamps at affordable prices without compromising on quality and form. The brand has been an absolute success!
After two years of designing and developing, our dream and ambition to contribute with new classic designs to the long standing Danish furniture tradition, is coming true. We are proud to present the new Viggo furniture collection.
The Viggo collection includes chairs, barstools, benches, dining tables and coffee tables.
Viggo Chair
The Viggo chair has a two-shell structure, which gives the chair its high seating comfort and distinctive design expression, different from all other chairs. The back and seat of the chair merge together and create a comfortable seating flexibility. A single visible brass screw connects the back with the seat of the chair, leading to its honest and contemporary look. The chair is available in wood veneer with or without upholstered seat and back. Proudly produced in Denmark.
Viggo Table
The Viggo table stands out with its simple and honest design. The light construction with the two parted legs ensure stability in an elegant and simple expression. The angle of the table legs provides ample room for chairs and increases stability further. A well-balanced table, an honest and classic Danish Design. Can be ordered in several sizes, materials and with added extensions. Proudly produced in Denmark.
Maison&Objet 2014: Catalan designer Eugeni Quitllet has taken the silhouettes of famous modernist chairs and amalgamated them into the back of this bar stool.
Eugeni Quitllet‘s Masters Stool retains the sinuous forms of the chair he created with French designer Philippe Starck for Italian plastics company Kartell.
The three strands that form the back are derived from the recognisable outlines of Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair, Charles Eames’ DSW seat and Eero Saarinen’s Tulip design. These intertwined shapes create a back support and armrests that flow into the seat and legs.
Original Masters Chair by Eugeni Quitllet and Philippe Starck
“The stool version is available with longer legs, the seat is smaller, but the inimitable graphic hallmark of its frame coming from the interweaving of three silhouettes is the same,” said the designer.
Masters Chair form development graphic
The proportions of the original chair have been altered to incorporate the smaller seat and the longer legs are braced by a square ring close to the ground, which doubles as a footrest.
Available in a range of colours, the bar stool can be used both indoors or outdoors. It was launched at the Maison&Objet trade fair outside Paris, which finished earlier this week.
Dutch designers Bernotat & Co have created a range of coverings for chairs that are modelled on a grandma’s dressing gown, baggy overalls and an oven mitt.
Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
Dutch designers Bernotat & Co developed the concept for people to recycle old chairs and make them more comfortable to sit on.
“Being slightly strange, some of them maybe even awkward, they trigger emotional reactions,” said the designers. “People relate differently to the chairs when they’re dressed up and the chairs suddenly acquire a certain anthropomorphic quality.”
Big Baggy. Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
The newest piece of the chair clothing, Big Baggy, is made from heavy duty canvas used in overalls and work wear. The back features two big pockets for newspapers, books and magazines, while the side pockets have space for stationary, iPads, iPhones and a hanging loop for headphones.
Pique Pocket
Pique Pocket is made from a quilted fabric similar to that of an oven mitt and slips over the back of a chair, tucking in at the sides like an apron. Users can slips their hands into the large pockets that hang down behind when they are seated.
Hoodini. Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
Hoodini features a multifunctional cover with a hood attached that can be slipped over a person, completely obscuring their head from view or used as a storage space when it hangs behind the chair.
Photograph by Rogier Chang
The quilted fabric is reminiscent of a grandma’s dressing gown or a Chesterfield sofa.
Knit-Net. Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
The foam packing for apples inspired the designers to create the Knit-Net design, a stretchy slip-on cover made from acrylic and wool filled with foam. Four press studs help secure it in place at the base of the seat.
Photograph by Rogier Chang
The Chair Wear Prét-á-Porter Collection is a selection of their favourite designs from the Haute Couture Collection, presented at Milan and Dutch Design Week last year. The designers have since introduced new colours and one new design.
Photograph by Marleen Sleeuwits
Here’s a some more information from Bernotat & Co:
Chair Wear
Chair Wear started as a mildly ironical joke, and ended up in a very inspiring new way of looking at furniture upholstery, of seeing it as a separate item, leading to new constructions, productions techniques and materials. With a real collection as a result.
The idea of dressing up chairs evolved while working on the Triennial Chair for Gispen. This chair has a separate cushion in the back, which allows it to be upholstered in two different kinds of fabrics, in endless combinations. With Chair Wear, the idea is taken even further: Bernotat&Co looked at upholstery as a separate item, as clothing for chairs, specially designed and custom-made for this purpose.
Chair Wear stimulates re-use by upgrading old furniture. But the aim is not just restyling. Instead, Bernotat&Co researched the possibilities of adding comfort to hard wooden chairs, or of creating additional functions for simple chairs. For this purpose, the chairs are dressed up with unexpected textiles, ranging from high-tech to industrial to traditional.
For our ‘Prêt-à-Porter models’, we used a variety of techniques and materials, like we did in the initial ‘Haute Couture collection’: Three-dimensional knit-and-wear for Knit Net, the innovative 3d knitted textiles from Innofa for Pique Pocket and Hoodini, and for Big Baggy we used heavy duty canvas that is normally used in overalls and work wear. All of them provide a soft contrast to the hard, basic chairs forming the framework.
In addition, the Chair Wear models give a nice twist to the rather tacky subject of chair covers. As ambiguous objects with various sources of inspiration, they’re open to associations. Being slightly strange, some of them maybe even awkward, they trigger emotional reactions. People relate differently to the chairs when they’re dressed-up, and the chairs suddenly acquire a certain antropomorphic quality. After all, the Dutch word for upholstery is ‘bekleding’ – its root including the word ‘clothing’, creating a direct relation to the human body.
News: Russian socialite and gallerist Dasha Zukhova has sparked a racism row after a photograph of her sitting on a chair in the form of an inverted semi-naked black woman appeared alongside an interview on a Russian website.
The photograph, which originally appeared on Buro247, was later cropped by the publication to remove the chair but not before it had circulated widely, sparking furore.
FashionBombDaily editor Claire Sulmers, who broke the story, described the image as an example of “white dominance and superiority, articulated in a seemingly serene yet overtly degrading way.”
This image: Zhukova sits on Allen Jones Remake by Bjarne Melgaard, 2013. Main image: Dasha Zhukova portrait published in Buro247
“We can’t help but be filled with anger and frustration over the onslaught of negative imagery, constant disregard and unabashed bigotry that continues to plague the fashion industry,” wrote Huffington Post’s Julee Wilson.
The timing of the interview, which was published on Martin Luther King Day, added to the furore.
Allen Jones Remake by Bjarne Melgaard in Gang Bust exhibition at Venus Over Manhattan, New York, 2013
Zukhova defended the image in a statement, saying: “This photograph, which has been published completely out of context, is of an art work intended specifically as a commentary on gender and racial politics. I utterly abhor racism, and would like to apologise to anyone who has been offended by this image.”
The chair – an example of forniphilia or human furniture – was created by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard and is one of a series of interpretations of pieces originally created by British pop artist Allen Jones in 1969.
The original chair by Allen Jones, 1969
Jones created a series of three artworks called Hatstand, Table and Chair featuring white, female fibreglass mannequins. The first is standing with arms outstretched; the second crouching on all fours with a pane of glass on her back; and the third lying on the floor with her legs strapped to her chest and a cushion balanced on her thighs.
Korova Milk Bar in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange
Jones’ pieces were also interpreted in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, where forniphilic tables and milk dispensers furnish the Korova Milk Bar. Jones allegedly turned down Kubrick’s offer to design the bar for free, forcing Kubrick to commission derivative designs.
Zukhova is girlfriend of Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovic and owner of the Garage gallery in Moscow, which is being designed by Rem Koolhaas of OMA. Buro247 is owned by her friend Miroslava Duma.
The Steltman chair by twentieth century Dutch architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld has been reissued by furniture brand Rietveld Originals to mark the iconic design’s fiftieth anniversary.
Rietveld Originals produced 100 limited editions of the chair, first designed in 1963 as a symmetrical pair for the Steltman jewellery house in The Hague.
Reissued Steltman chair (also main image)
Released at the end of last year, the chair was reproduced using the original drawings and one of the two original chairs, currently on display at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.
The design is broken up into three simple shapes that appear to rest up against and on top of each other. These sections are all upholstered in leather, the original material used to cover the chair.
Original chairs in the Steltman jewellery store
Fifty dark grey chairs have the single arm on the right and the fifty white models are a mirror image.
Gerrit Rietveld was a principle member of the De Stijl modernist movement in the Netherlands during the early twentieth century.
Finnish graduate Mikko Hannula based the design of this faceted metal chair on a 3D scan of a traditional wooden seat called a Windsor chair (+ slideshow).
Hannula‘s Windsor 2.0 project explores how familiar objects can be updated using digital technologies to give them an appearance that reflects the cutting-edge tools available to contemporary designers.
“Furniture [designs] like the Windsor chair are becoming relics in the eyes of the younger generation and they desperately need some updating to become appealing again in our digital age,” Hannula told Dezeen.
“From a manufacturing point of view this sort of digital translation opens up whole new possibilities and market opportunities for traditional products,” he added.
The designer used a pocket camera and Autodesk’s 123D Catch software, which transforms photographs into 3D digital models, to capture the shape of a Windsor chair – a traditional design that features a solid wooden seat into which the turned wooden legs, struts and steam-bent back are inserted.
“I chose to use the Windsor chair as the basis of my design because it has a special meaning to the British people,” explained Hannula, who recently graduated from Buckinghamshire New University in High Wycombe. “It is an essential part of domestic interiors in the UK and an archetypal product in the furniture-making history in High Wycombe, the former chair-making capital of the world.”
A digital model generated by scanning the chair was simplified and abstracted into a series of faceted surfaces using 3D software.
Hannula then translated the three-dimensional form into a flat net shape that could be transferred onto a steel sheet.
From this point the chair was manufactured using manual processes. The metal was cut and then folded using a fly press before the joints were welded to create the chair’s rigid form.
The decision to use simple folding processes to produce the chair was influenced by Hannula’s original intention to develop an open-source product that could be made available online for people to download and put together themselves.
Windsor 2.0 was Hannula’s graduation project and currently exists as a one-off. However, he believes it could form the basis of a collection of products that reinterpret other classic designs.
Manipulated 3D scan of original chair
Here’s some more information from the designer:
Windsor 2.0
Digital technologies are developing rapidly expanding from industry use to the average household opening up new exciting possibilities for the future. However, instead of just going forward we must not forget the past. Objects are only important as a source of memory and association: they affect us through their ability to bring back fragments of the past to the present.
My aim has been to look back and forth at the same time challenging the established division between tradition and innovation and blurring boundaries between low tech and hi tech. Using current digital tools I have ‘hacked’ into the DNA of an old Windsor chair resulting in a form that is typical for the digital age yet traditional and somehow familiar.
Digital model being simplified to create faceted surfaces
This project started as a thesis research project. I was trying to find out what kind of things people cherish in their homes and for what reasons. More than 50 % of all the respondents I interviewed mentioned memories as a reason for cherishing their special possessions. Although personal memories tend to evolve in time through different occasions and experiences, it is possible to make everyday objects to preserve history.
Final faceted form
Windsor chair was a natural choice for the project because of its fundamental status in the furniture making history in High Wycombe and in the memory and the domestic landscape of Britain. I wanted to ‘upgrade’ this old, iconic piece of furniture, taking it to the digital age of 21st century.
Original Windsor chair
The original chair was 3D scanned using 123D Catch software from Autodesk and a pocket camera. The digital model was then abstracted and refined, making it structurally feasible and aesthetically pleasing. After that the templates were created by unfolding the model and transferred onto sheet steel, which was then cut and folded back into a form of a chair and spray-painted. Despite the digital emphasis of the design process, this chair was materialised by hand using very traditional methods and materials.
Although digital fabrication could have been applied in manufacturing process, folding the product corresponded better with the initial idea of an open-source production which whoever could download from the Internet and reconstruct themselves. Also, rabidly developing technology and increasingly cheaper costs of 3D printing will soon make it more economical to print out products like this. For now, however, this chair remains as a one-off piece, a ‘furniture sculpture’.
Nigro‘s main aim with the design of the Cosse sofa for Ligne Roset was to optimise comfort, so he created a form with gentle contours that sweep around the sitter.
The designer described the shape of the sofa as: “Softly welcoming contours, a soft, delicate all-enveloping form which, sustained by a fine natural wood structure, floats above the ground.”
The seat features a curved front edge that transitions into undulating armrests and connects to the high, rounded backrest. Webbed elastic suspension adds to the comfort of the cushion.
“Mastery of the constraints of series production, hand in hand with optimized technology and materials, work together to produce freely-flowing shapes such as that of the Cosse settee,” Nigro added.
Simple wooden battens with a rectangular section are joined to create a minimal frame upon which the bulky body of the sofa rests.
A soldered steel framework supports the dense polyurethane foam shape, which can be upholstered in a choice of fabrics.
The base can be specified with a natural beech finish or a dark anthracite stain. Two sizes of sofa are available, with a matching footstool completing the family.
Cosse is being presented by Ligne Roset at its stand located in Hall 11.3 at trade fair imm cologne until Sunday.
Here’s a project description from Ligne Roset:
Concept
Comfort is a sensation. As with all sensations any description will be subjective, but is it not an impression of lightness, such as when a body is liberated from its own weight in the water?
Comfort, therefore, was the inspiration for the Cosse settee, along with the expertise acquired by Cinna over time, such as their capacity to integrate the required technology with the optimization of materials in a way which preserves lightness, perhaps through the use of minimally thick materials and discreet framework which will fade into the background for the benefit of the simplest and lightest possible forms.
Mastery of the constraints of series production, hand in hand with optimized technology and materials, work together to produce freely-flowing shapes such as that of the Cosse settee.
Softly welcoming contours, a soft, delicate all-enveloping form which, sustained by a fine natural wood structure, floats above the ground.
The remarkable comfort of the seat, achieved thanks to its elastic-webbed suspension, contributes to this feeling of comfort and lightness.
One will also note those little details which, as always with Cinna, add to the sumptuousness of the model: the meanders of the armrest, for example, and the resulting difficulty of upholstering these, or the extreme slimness of the solid wood feet.
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