take a seat
take
a seat
by jon taylor
Seating has become a fad. In an industry that once produced necessary innovation every decade or so, chairs have become as transitional as PDAs and PowerBooks.
Chairs have entered the full-cycle of fashion. Hemline up, hemline down. The peak of our current chair hype was fueled by the Aeron. Its birth catapulted the concept of "ergonomic" into stylish, high-end office spaces and showrooms. Today my dry cleaner, Jan, has one. She bought it for $200 from an unplugged start-up in San Francisco. Next year it will probably be on sale at K-Mart.
New chairs are everywhere. I wonder how many offices and lofts are bursting with designer chairs, all mismatched and jockeying for attention. It's as if the chairs were the designers themselves, climbing a social ladder and fighting for their moment of fame. The Aeron chair alone has spawned a long line of imitators--Haworth's X-99, Thonet's Yada, Vitra's Ypsilon,and Steelcase's Leap chair (available with a signature Coach label on the back). And don't get me started on Phillipe Starck's silly, transparent, plastic La Marie chairs.
The latest darling to enter the race is Welsh industrial designer Ross Lovegrove's Go chair. Go. As in Chet Baker whispering "Let's Go" or a drag queen declaring "You Go, Girl." I like the name. It has movement. It swings. Retailing at about $700, Go, the sexy, magnesium-based media darling is all the rage. Go's big feature is that it stacks. Wow. It also has its own New York PR firm (note to self: hire Clifford PR next time I launch something). Go appears on the cover of the Design Within Reach catalog and it's poised to launch its somewhat dusty manufacturer (Bernhardt) into the mainstream contract design glory.
Do we really need another "it" chair? It's time for the design industry to take on and update something else. How about better house numbers and mailboxes? Or better garage doors? We need well-designed night stands and someone really does need to solve the chronic problem of what to do with all those CD cases. How about a revolution in food and beverage carts for airlines? Or better yet, a new standard for luggage.
Lord, we don't need another task chair, we've got Steelcase and Knolls enough to climb.
Resources
Design Within
Reach
The "Go" chair, the Aeron chair (and way too many other design fetish
chairs)can be purchased online at:
www.dwr.com
