Chairs. Yawn yawn.

I hate chairs.

Well obviously I don't hate chairs, they're good for sitting on etc etc. What I hate is how furniture designers, and normally new, young furniture designers, always seem to fall back on chairs. Every bloody furniture exhibition you go to has the latest chair designs. Do we really need any more fucking chair designs? Surely, somewhere, the perfect chair must have been designed already?

(The classic Ant Chair by Arne Jacobsen taken from the Jacobsen site, with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

The requirements stay the same. People don't change that much over the years, a little fatter, a little taller, maybe, but legs still bend in the middle. People still rest on their posteriors when seated. So the design of chairs gets worse, more complicated, more stuff being added - confusing the issue rather than solving the problem.

(Chair with concrete base by Konstantin Grcic, with seat in die cast aluminium, treated with sputtered fluorinated titanium and painted in polyester powder. With concrete base painted transparent clear. Taken from the Twenty Twenty One site with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

So when I saw this in the Design Museum tank thing, I let out a long sigh.

Poor stuff guys, try harder.

Comments

[Charles]

An E.U. 50 anniversary chair designed by Szymon Skrzypczak?... ;)

[carl]

I agree, chairs are way overrated. When you're sitting in them, which is most of the time, you don't see the bloody things anyway.

Cheers, Carl.

[Bureau L'Imprimante]

Hi Carl, when you wear a hat you don't see the bloody thang neither, but…
Now, sit on this:
http://www.vvork.com/?p=2450
It's a bit like a ready-made design, but looks new in the same time. Everyone should be happy with that, even Ben the boy (the man beeing Dan, I had to do this one, sorry).
Big up à tous les massive.
Loïc

[Richard]

I guess we don't need more chairs as much as we need bigger chairs for our fatter arses: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1170787.stm

Perhaps chair designers need to concentrate on the fattening arse trend: chairs that expand with our arses?

(Three "arses" in one comment (actually, that's four now) - well done me).

[Ben]

Bureau, I'm not happy. That chair is exactly what I mean. How exactly does that improve on other chair designs?

Richard, all swearing welcome here.

[nateA]

well i don't fully agree but i would like to ask why graphic designers have to always change the layout of their posters. What is wrong with just using the same layout , font, colours etc?

[Ben]

I knew someone would say that.

Because with each poster the requirements have changed. Different client, different information, different message.

With chairs the requirement is the same again and again.

[claire]

But you wouldn't want to sit on an armchair on the beach or a deckchair in front of the TV would you? Chairs have different uses and mean different things to different people:
1.My old school displayed a chair Queen Mary had allegedly sat on in its hallway - of course we all dared each other to sit on it before the headmistress came out and gave us a rollicking.
2. I once went to a friend's flat he was renting from the owner and there were a couple of okay trendy looking chairs - HE WASN"T ALLOWED TO SIT ON THEM EVER.

Chair as design or chair as useful object. There's the rub...personally I sit on a gym ball most of the time, it corrects posture and tones stomach muscle. So there chair designers!

[Bureau L'Imprimante]

Sorry sir.
BUT if you really want to know what I do seriously believe, I think the problem comes from the chair itself. Not this one or that one, but from the concept itself. The human body is not designed to be sat the way we do in the western world.
Let me quote Adam Dahlin:
"Why do all chairs look the same? Are four legs and a back a law of nature? Why does it have to be like that? (...) Most people in European countries have problems when they try to sit on their heels, because the Achilles tendon became too short as a side-effect from the ordinary Windsor-style chair."
So he and his swedish posse from Futurniture designed the Huken, wich is very well documented in Petit Glam N°6 (pp.28-34, Tokyo 2001, Petit Grand Publishing) and less well here:
http://www.helgo.net/finn/projects/stolensgrafik/index.html
but that's all I could find on the web. The kid here is not exactly on the right position, but I think everyone will get the point.
Oh, I just found something at the bottom of this page:
http://www.pnaumann.net/naumannMain/reviews/design.htm
That sure is design.

[Lebowski]

For simple, classic, functional chairs, try these guys:

http://www.emeco.net/flash.asp

Originally set up to supply chairs to the US navy and prisons (so they must be sturdy for the fights), they have recently moved into offering some interesting chairs created alongside some design types.

It's a valid question to raise - how many more chairs do we need? But, to play a slightly uneducated devil's advocate, is that possibly a bit like saying we don't need any more fonts, we have enough already? They all use the 26 letters of the alphabet, and most of them are legible and some even have some kind of character and personality to them.. how many more graphic designers are going to spend time coming up with new ones..?

[Ben]

Bureau, that's a different take at least.

Lebowski, the reason we need / develop new fonts is that the circumstances change. People want a font that communicates something different. A new font for a new band say, or a new font for new type of service like a search engine for example. OK, that doesn't happen all the time, but still.

I just can't see that the requirements (I suppose the brief) for a chair ever changes that much. So we just end up with worse chairs. More complicated chairs. Chairs that do the chair thing and then loads of other stuff that gets in the way, like having a bloody concrete base.

Most new fonts enrich the experience rather than confusing it.

[Lebowski]

But can't requirements for chairs be similar to requirements for fonts? If you assume they only ever serve a functional purpose, then you could make the same argument for fonts - and we'd all be stuck using times new roman or arial.

Chairs can express individuals or corporate personalities just as much as any communication or graphic design element can. They are a tangible expression of the values/personality of that person or business. And they can certainly enrich the experience.

[Mat]

seems like 'Designing A Chair' for a product designer is like following in a long tradition. No I suppose you can't always (try to) re-invent the wheel but perhaps its some sort of right-of-passage. Having said that, it doesn't mean do it for your degree show/first sale/shop.

[Ben]

Fonts are very ephemeral which seems to make it acceptable to keep creating new ones. Also things do change, remember when they redesigned the font used in the Yellow Pages and they reduced the page count by half? There's also been the printed font / screen font thing.

And, like Mat says, if you're gonna do it, don't put it in your bloody degree show, first sale or shop.

[jerry trail]

i think i'll just stick to my old, fat, stuffed, no bells or whistles but very comfortable chair.