Iconic Chairs of the 21st Century

Chairs can come in all shapes and sizes, and furniture as a whole can be approached in various ways and means. You can either go for a very functional design focusing on the ergonomics and the way the user will be comfortable sitting on the chair. A second direction could be to base your design on the materials and technology of the time and use a more design and styling perspective to your idea. These five chairs are Iconic pieces of design and use great style, materials, manufacturing process and great detail is placed towards the functionality.

This is a Rodney Kinsman creation known as the ‘F Range’ lounge chair. It has a distinctive 60s design and was created in 1966. The chair is made from polyurethane foam with a protective red PVC cover. This sculpture foam was like many of the OMK design Ltd (the company Rodney Kinsman worked for,) products which brought OMK success through the chain store Habitat. Polyurethane foam is used widely in furniture and is made by mixing polyols, diiscyanates, catalysts, auxiliary blowing agents and other additives. This allows the resulting foam to rise freely. Most foam is manufactured as a continuous process but where small batches are needed small blocks of foam are made in open-topped moulds. The foam after setting can be cut into desired shape and size for furniture.

Ross Lovegrove designed the supernatural chair, seen on the left. This chair is made through injection moulding in glass fibre reinforced polyamide with the gas moulding process. The system requires a large investment but allows the design to be excellent value for money. The chair has a very organic and natural look to its design, with the manufacturing techniques of the 21st century polymers.Gas assist injection moulding is an enhancement from the conventional way in which you would injection mould. It involves high pressured nitrogen gas which is shot into a resin melt stream immediately after the injection of resins. The process is of high speed and low in pressure, and much lower compared to conventional injection moulding.

This chair was designed in 1940 by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. It was entered into the “Organic Design in Home furnishings Competition.” The chair itself is made from Molded plywood, Foam rubber and fabric.

Robin Day is a designer best know for creating the polypropylene chair, which was first manufactured in 1963. The chair can often still be found today in schools up and down the country. The design was in fact inspired by an enameled bent tubular steel base. We are familiar with this chair in today’s society from it being around in school, businesses and shops. The chair inspired from another designer, Eames’ ‘Plastic Shell.’ The chair made from thermoplastic polypropylene, it is injection moulded, a process which is high in set-up costs of the moulding. But they are often off set against large production numbers which lowers the average cost per unit. Polypropylene itself is inexpensive, durable, lightweight and easy to clean. All good properties to have for a piece of furniture which is going to undertake its fair share of use. It is said that a single mould can produce 4000 seat shells per week, with over 14million of these polypropylene chairs estimated to have been made to the present day.

This is the work of Charles Race, this particular chair is known as the “Antelope” chair. It was manufactured for the festival of Britain in 1951, it can either be found as a single chair or as a bench also. The frame itself is made from bent steel rods with a simple moulded plywood seat for the user to sit down on. The disguise of the steel rods is the main character of this chair, and has been described as ingenious and bold. The Antelope chair is a development of the rocking chair which he had made in 1948. The chair like all of Charles Race furniture was characteristically light and easy to handle with clean lines and thin splayed legs, the chair is still manufactured today and considered a classic of its time.