In a 1957 interview with TIME magazine, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said, “A chair is a very difficult object; a skyscraper is almost easier.” Unlike a skyscraper, chairs are only visible when they aren’t being used; they have to stand out outside of their primary purpose.
A chair’s design is a balance between form and function, as it needs to be ergonomic, pleasing to the eye and durable. We rock, twist and stand on chairs; they’re arguably one of the most overlooked and overused pieces of furniture we can own. Self-taught British designer Tom Dixon says, “It’s more demanding from a structural engineering point than you think. The construction becomes really important.”
Take an office chair, for example; it has to be ergonomic and comfortable in such a way that it encourages optimum concentration and productivity. Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus of Vitra, describes office chairs as part chair, part machine, thanks to their combination of mechanics and ergonomics. But designers also need to make those chairs, “beautiful and pleasant to touch, which is a very demanding task,” says Fehlbaum.
It’s why chairs can often feel like something organic: they have legs and (usually arms), and must be shaped around the contours of the human body. Yet despite the importance of a chair’s structure, visuals by no means take a back seat. “If a chair has no visual appeal, as you see it first, it will be difficult for any further success,” Jay Novak, co-founder and designer of Modernica, says. In other words, if a chair isn’t beautiful, who will sit on it to see if it’s comfortable?
Yet their aesthetics are often restricted by their formal requirements; unless the chair in question is strictly an exercise in art, it needs to serve humans. “The more obsessed you become with absolute flexibility, posture, ergonomics and safety, it’ll leave less room for the sculptural and revolutionary,” says Dixon.
The Mid-Century Modern era is often viewed as a revolutionary turning point in design, particularly for chairs. People debate which years define MCM furniture design, but a general consensus is from the mid-’30s to the mid-’60s. It was a time of experimentation in materials with an emphasis on functionality. The period’s use of clean lines, geometric shapes and an overall modern approach mean many styles have never gone out of fashion — to this day the Eames Lounge Chair is still in production.
Ray and Charles Eames’ Lounge Chair is instantly recognizable. The couple drew inspiration from “the warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt” and the English gentlemen’s club chair, but made those references into something entirely new. Its use of curvaceous molded plywood had, at the time, never been seen before — putting the chair at the forefront of product innovation.
Although mid-century furniture has been growing in popularity since the ’80s, it is now seeing a larger revival. The style isn’t just booming in the chair industry; it’s appearing to dominate the storage market (see West Elm’s dedicated MCM collection or SWOON’s extensive range of furniture) and has inspired companies to create retro-futuristic products. For example, London-based design company Joy Resolve is known for its bedside coffee-brewing alarm clock, which breathes life back into the long-forgotten teasmade from the ’60s. Modernica, which was founded in 1999, has found huge success in designing furniture that draws influence from the MCM period. For example, Modernica’s range of fiberglass chairs harks back to the Eames’s molded plastic and fiberglass armchair.
And it’s not just the MCM period that’s having a revival. Chairs are being celebrated more than ever. Vitra’s Chair Times: A History of Seating film explores 125 years of design, examining the production methods, fashion trends and social structures of the period from when each chair was made. In the film, Fehlbaum discusses specific pieces and periods with designers including Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec as well as architects Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, and offers thought-provoking commentary throughout; one key point being, “chairs are important witnesses of their time.”
As that film shows, many chair designs have earned iconic status. But at which point does a chair surpass function and become purely art or sculpture — and how much does that cost? “This happens not by trying to make art, but by making an object so well designed, so new and fresh, so much expressing the spirit of a time, that it transcends its function as a chair while still being useful as a chair,” Fehlbaum says. Gerrit Rietveld, the Dutch architect equally known for his Red and Blue chair and his Rietveld Schröder House, and Jean Prouvé, the self-taught architect and designer of the Cité chair, are just two designers whose works achieved such a status.