This group of contemporary furniture represents both the ideas of the moment—innovative materials, technology, and manufacturing processes—and remnants of the past—traditional forms, processes, and natural materials.
“With every assignment we try to do something different…But of course we have some obsessions: sensuality, elegance, and fluidity.” —Patrick Jouin
French designer Patrick Jouin thrives through creative cultivation of new ideas. In 2004 he introduced his innovative use of rapid prototyping (RP) technologies: a computer-aided design is transmitted to a 3-D printer, where lasers harden liquefied or powdered plastic, layer by layer, until the design emerges completed without assembly. Jouin was the first to successfully adapt this technology to furniture, and his SOLID series (S1 stool) is a groundbreaking collection of self-produced furniture designs resulting from his RP studies.
“I don’t subscribe to any discipline. . . . There’s very little demarcation between sculpture, design, architecture.” —Ron Arad
London-based designer Ron Arad is known for his innovative architecture, industrial design, and limited-edition studio pieces. His ability to blur the line between art and design makes him one of today’s most influential contemporary designers. As a professor of product design, Arad continues to push the boundaries of material and process by combining precious metals and plastics with cutting-edge technology.
A special commission for the High Museum, Jurgen Bey’s Treetrunk Bench High Table is a lighthearted yet serious artwork that uses humor to raise awareness about environmental conservation. The eighty-year-old Mockernut Hickory came from the Atlanta Botanical Garden, providing a wonderful opportunity for the two institutions to collaborate on the creation of an artwork that is as much a part of Atlanta’s history as they are. It includes Bey’s signature use of bronze chair-backs cast from pre-existing chairs, but is unique in the series because Bey created the tall side table exclusively for the High.
Reflexive Analysis
Furniture and design are inseparable, so what happen when the rules of conventional design practice are thrown to the wayside and we are left to experiment with it all? Art!
Engaging places to rest are often overlooked in our busy day-to-day. After all, a chair is a chair, few care what it looks like, where it is located, or what it’s made of when they simply need a seat. However, when creatives take the time to explore these forms and materials, new ideas begin to sprout from the abstractions created. While these artistic renditions of common ways of seating are varying distances from practical, the point they serve is beyond just function. These pieces of furniture say something to you, whether it is asking you to reflect on the nostalgia and innocence of childhood, trying to be humorous in it’s inaccessibility, or calling attention to sustainability through the recycled materials.
Understanding that specially designed furniture can facilitate a certain type of environment, what can we do as designers to create furniture that inspires collaboration and openness? How can furniture cross the gap of the more serious adult world with the cartoonishly dramatic middle-school aged world?
Incredible, Innovative, and Unexpected Contemporay Furniture Designs
Google. "Incredible, Innovative, and Unexpected Contemporary Furniture Designs." Google Arts & Culture, Google, artsandculture.google.com/story/zAWRaygCucnxLQ. Accessed 21 Sept. 2022.
