Chair Architectonics

Abstract

Chair design is one of the most demanding and most challenging tasks for designers, to which creative efforts of numerous architects have been continuously linked. Since the beginning of the twentieth century the intensity of these efforts has not diminished. By creating an ideal microcosm around an essential everyday object, architects also express their understanding of space and time. A chair, like architecture, occupies a position in space that it also defines. The paper analyses three groups of chairs characteristic of the 20th century, different in terms of typology and morphology. Their architectonics are marked by a specific functional, formal and constructive idea, by concrete production possibilities and by technological procedures in the working of individual materials. Notably, reclining chairs, cantilever chairs with steel tube constructions and office chairs. The model of analysis put forward could also serve as a point of departure for future more extensive research into the same, or different, typological and morphological design. Three Croatian chair models are placed in the context of the pertaining design.