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Combining playful forms and experiments with advanced technologies, RON ARAD (1951-) has emerged as one of the most influential designers of our time.
Born in Tel Aviv, he moved to London in 1973 to study architecture and made his name in the early 1980s as a self-taught designer-maker of sculptural furniture.
He now works across both design and architecture. Consistently inventive and challenging, Ron Arad has studiously avoided categorization by curators and critics throughout his career.
The Modernists rebelled against the concept of furniture that was merely decorative and created sleek, impersonal furniture that was designed to fit in many situations.
Technology was a key for these followers of the Bauhaus School and saw the machine as an extension of the hand. His furnitures were designed to support industrial production.
Here is the "Tulip Chair" designed in 1956 by the Finnish-born architect, Eero Saarinen. Made of fiberglass-reinforced resin, the seat of the Tulip Chair rests on a single leg.
Also displayed is the Womb Chair.
The Barcelona chair by was designed by Mies van der Rohe for the 1929 World Exposition in Barcelona. Leather straps were used to suspend leather-covered cushions from chrome plated steel frame.
The Barcelona chair was a custom design created for the King and Queen of Spain. This was used as an artistic statement to illustrate how negative space could be used to transform a functional item to a sculptural object.
"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous." --Mies van der Rohe quoted in Time magazine, February 18, 1957.
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