Architect’s Chairs

Every architect needs a SIGNATURE CHAIR and their modern chairs embody their design aesthetic and creative process. Chair are not a far departure from architecture, in fact in many ways a chair requires the same spatial consideration and informs as much response from the user as architecture does.  If you haven’t spent much time thinking about chair design it is worth some reflection. Chairs can reinforce the architecture of a space as well as how that space is to be used.  Does the chair allow for a relaxing or is it straight formal.  Does the chair look comfortable or sculptural appropriate more to be looked at then used.

Take a look at these chairs… can you see the resemblance in the architecture?

Mies van der Rohe

Barcelona Chair vs Barcelona Pavilion

Eero Saarinen

Tulip Chair vs TWA Airport

Alvar Aalto

Paimio Chair vs. Baker House

Daniel Libeskind

Diamond Chair vs The ROM

Ray and Charles Eames

Lounge Chair vs. Case Study House 8

Zaha Hadid

Z Chair vs MAXXI Museum

  

Maya Lin

Stones vs. Vietnam Memorial

Frank Lloyd Wright

Barrel Chair vs Guggenheim

Gerrit Rietveld

Red and Blue Chair vs The Rietveld Schröder House

Richard Neutra

Boomerang Chair vs Kaufmann House

 

Frank Gehry

Cardboard Armchair vs. Vitra Design Museum

 

Le Corbusier

Chaise vs Notre Dame du Haut

If you love chairs as much as most architecture groupies do here are a few MUST HAVE books to quench your thirst for more beautifully designed chairs:

Furniture by Architects: From Aalto to Zumthor poses such questions as: do architects design differently to product designers? Do they exhibit any consistent aesthetic preferences? Is there something typically architectural in their designs? Furniture by Architects features works by Alvar Aalto, Ron Arad, Gae Aulenti, Karl Bertsch, Emil Beutinger, Marcel Breuer, Pierre Chareau, Egon Eiermann, El Lissitsky, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Walter Gropius, Zaha Hadid, Marc Held, Josef Hoffmann, Arne Jacobsen, Le Corbusier, Daniel Libeskind, Gio Ponti, Richard Riemerschmid, Gerrit Rietveld, Eero Saarinen, Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, O.M. Ungers, Mies van der Rohe, Otto Wagner, Frank Lloyd Wright and Peter Zumthor, among others.

Fifty Chairs That Changed the World takes an up-close look at chair designs that have had the greatest impact on the look and feel of modern interiors.

 

 

How To Design a Chair tells you everything you need to know and looks at the principles and processes of designing a chair, from its symbolic and functional properties to materials and mass-production techniques. In a working case study Konstantin Grcic, one of the world’s best-known furniture designers, traces the design and development of one of his most successful chairs – the Myto – from start to finish and reveals what it takes to create a successful design.

which chair is your favorite, would you sit in any of these?

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