1000 Chairs
1000 Chairs (Taschen 25) Charlotte Fiell, Peter Fiell,
Publisher: Taschen
ISBN: 382284103X
DDC: 684
Edition: Paperback; 2005-05-30
Summary:
Sleek, stuffed, buttoned, or bent, in the den or the dining room, the
chair is an indicator of its owner's identity. Chairs make up much of
the interior landscape of our homes and workplaces, and a comfortable
chair is considered a great asset in either location. A rigorous
survey of the last 150 years of chairs, 1000 Chairs is a pictorial
guide to the axiom "you are where you sit." Writers Charlotte and
Peter Fiell argue that, as well as being an icon of identity, the
chair is a form through which designers engage in social, political,
and even ergonomic rhetoric. A good example is George Nelson's
mass-produced modular seating system. Geometrical in design, its
austere, mostly rectilinear lines are efficient and economical. The
book follows developments and mutations in chair design from the days
before art deco through the rise of modernity and into the mid-'90s,
when designers like Philippe Starck used such materials as recycled
plastic and injection molded polypropylene. In total there are more
than the 1000 advertised illustrations, and each is accompanied by a
small text describing the significance of the chair and its designer.
The book includes more than 100 capsule biographies of such designers
as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Adolph Loos, and Marcel Breuer. The
only problem with 1000 Chairs is, ironically, its own ergonomics. At
about eight by six inches and nearly 800 pages, it is an unwieldy
little tome. That aside, this is a great book--a must for anyone
interested in sitting down. --Loren E. Baldwin
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