Rope Chair

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Rope Chair
Object date 2020
Place of Origin Made in Germany
Designer Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec
Manufacturer Artek
Materials Painted steel, plastic, movement sensor, electric motor

by anonymous student

The Rope chair was launched by the Finnish furniture company Artek at the Stockholm Furniture Fair in February 2020, and described by the company as a product that combines “…free artistic expression with industrial production” (Rope Chair Brochure, 2020).

Having been at the fair myself, it was interesting to hear comments about it from design colleagues, many thinking it was a bold statement and others seeing it as a missed opportunity for Artek to produce something for today’s needs with respect to the company’s heritage of functional furniture.

The Rope chair is an excellent example of a design object that draws the attention of the audience to question its legitimacy as well as the motives of the manufacturing company. As the chief curator of the Design Museum in Helsinki, Suvi Saloniemi, commented on an Instagram post by the stylist Hanna-Katariina Mononen: “It’s a ‘fun’ chair that could be by some young company entering the field, but it is not an Artek chair in the time of climate crisis” (Mononen, 2020).

Artek. (2020). Rope Chair Brochure [PDF] (1st ed., pp. 2-10). Retrieved from https://www.artek.fi/en/products/rope-chair#info.

Mononen, Hanna-Katariina @hannakatariinasi. (2020, February 5). Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/B8KwTmXhybg/.

Image

Artek. (2020). Rope Chair [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.artek.fi/en/products/rope-chair#info


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