Cardboard wiggle side chair
FURNITURE DESIGNS
1969–92
Frank Gehry’s wiggle side chair was the beginning of his most pervasive innovative ideas. While I was working in the interior design department at Bloomingdale’s, New York, Mr. Gehry came in to demonstrate the strength and comfort of his side chair. He climbed up onto the seat and jumped up and down. All of us, interior designers and furniture salespeople, watched in horror, but he knew something we all didn’t know, because he was smiling the whole time. This most amazing chair was impervious to the tests.
According to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Gehry’s furniture designs are a “quick fix” of his architectural practice: their realization is relatively immediate and low cost, and they provide a satisfying smaller forum in which various design concerns, including ones relating to his buildings, may be explored. They also demonstrate his fundamental concern with manipulating basic materials in unconventional ways to produce objects that are functional yet also visually striking. For his first designs, Easy Edges (1969–73), Gehry favored the simplicity of corrugated cardboard, a material frequently employed in his architectural models. After discovering that single sheets of cardboard gained exponential strength when layered, he began to manipulate the simple material into graceful, curvilinear chairs and tables. With hardboard facing applied to the flat surfaces, the furniture is immensely durable.
Frank Gehry on his cardboard chaise longue
Experimental Edges (1979–82) is a bulkier series of cardboard pieces, featuring rough, shaggy edges and an improvisational appearance. Gehry used thick corrugated cardboard with a pronounced texture to create this furniture’s larger volumes , manipulating their density by combining sheets of varying widths within a single form. Some sheets were intentionally misaligned within the stacks, creating an undulating line and slight ripples. Just wait until you see his fish next week!!!
http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/gehry/furniture_01.html
Do you like Gehry’s chairs here? Would you buy one of his chairs or a chaise longue like these?
Hi, Gail – Sorry I’m late to your Gehry party. I’m busy finally getting traction on the revisions of my WIP and trying to make a summertime push. I just came from your Gehry fish post first.
Anyway, I remember when those chairs were new and edgy (okay, they’re still edgy. 😉 ). I always wanted to “test drive” one and hadn’t realized he had a living room’s worth as well as that dining room chair. Are they light? I guess, because they’re made of paper, they’re not quite an easily renewable resource, unless you made them out of recycled paper or paper made from bamboo. See? Ya got me thinking – even before the caffeine from my morning cup of matcha green tea hits. 🙂 I do think they’re pleasing to the eye, shape-wise, but need more color.
Have fun at Nationals!