FURNITURE DESIGNERS

The following designers are some of the names who have left a legacy of forms, materials, and technologies of postwar or fifties furniture and have made them accessible. The focus is on designers who were born and/or worked in the United States. Until this time, the United States had been more of a follower than a leader in the story of Western furniture.

The birth of industrial design gave the United States a head start in the arena of mass-produced modern furniture.Though clearly influenced by both the German Bauhaus and Scandinavian Modern designs, the new applications and interpretations have been original. Called "organic design" after the 1940 exhibit by that name at the Museum of Modern Art in New York,its goal was to create a harmonious organization of parts.Without unnecessary ornament, its success depended on exquisitely simple forms that both followed and preceded function.Perhaps for the first time in the history of style, designs intended for both elite and popular audiences and pieces that were neither one of a kind nor crafted by traditional methods could stand on their own.

 Alvar Aalto (1898-1976, Finland)

One of the leading Scandinavian modernist architects and town planners, Alvar Aalto became known for the use of laminated bent plywood furniture, because he believed that warm wood is preferable to cold metal. He was born in Kuortane, a small town in Finland. After joining the battle for Finnish independence from Russia, he graduated from the Helsinki Institute of Technology in 1921. After serving in the military, he opened his own architectural office in 1923; in 1924 he married architect Aino Marsio, who joined his practice. (She died in 1949, and Aalto married architect Elissa Makiniemi in 1952, and they practiced together for the rest of his life.)

Aalto influenced Finnish building practices by helping to form the Finnish Standardization Institute. Impressed by Marcel Breuer, he experimented with tubular metal furniture in the 1920s. Aalto and Finnish designer Otto Korhonen patented a design for plywood, and then continued working with formed laminated plywood in forms suited for mass production, including stackable furniture. They eventually improved the process of wood lamination by developing the multi-planar process.

 Aalto's participation in the Milan Triennale and the London furniture exhibition in 1933 established his international reputation as a furniture designer. He went on win numerous international awards, and his work was exhibited alone or with other in museums throughout Europe and the United States. In 1935 he and associates established Artek for the international distribution of his plywood furniture. Among his man; furniture designs, the Cantilevered armchair of 1946 and the Fan Leg stool of 1954 are considered modernist classics. Other important designs include the Pairnio armchair of 1931; the Viipuri collection 1933-1935; the serving cart in 1936; the bent knee or L-leg; the Y-leg in 1947; and the Fan Leg or X-leg stool in 1954. Furniture was only part of his contribution to modern design, which in addition to architecture, included lighting and glassware. He also taught at M.I.T. from 1940 to 1949.

 Eero Aarnio (b. 1932, Finland)

Born in Helsinki, Eero Aarnio was trained at the School of Industrial Arts in Helsinki from 1954 to 1957. In the 1960s he experimented with plastics and opened his own design studio in Helsinki in 1962. His designs were produced in plastic and in steel by the Finnish firm Asko, a major Scandinavian furniture manufacturer. In addition to furniture design, he worked in interior design, industrial design, graphic design, and photography. In 1968 he received the American Industrial Design award for his Pas-tilli or Gyro chair. Other memorable 1960s furniture included the Mushroom chair in 1965, the Bubble chair in 1965, Kantarelli table in 1965, and the Ball or Globe chair in 1966. He then returned to the use of wood and other traditional materials for his later work.

 Marcel Breuer

Considered the “inventor” of tubular steel furniture, the designer and architect Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) is one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. Born and raised in Hungary, he studied at the Bauhaus where he went on to head the furniture workshop from 1925 to 1928. During this period, he produced numerous tubular steel furniture pieces, including the legendary Wassily club chair that brought him international renown. With his furniture in aluminum and molded plywood in the 1930s, he continued to make design history until immigrating to the USA in 1937. First working as a professor at Harvard University, Breuer began a second, highly successful career as an architect. Owing a great deal to modernism, his buildings –primarily single-family homes, university and office buildings as well as museums – were internationally recognized in the 1950s and 1960s for their exemplary character.

The retrospective produced by the Vitra Design Museum pays tribute to Breuer’s well-known contributions to 20th century design history. Yet it also brings renewed attention to his architectural works, which have fallen somewhat into oblivion in the past decades. In so doing, it is the first exhibition to give proper attention to both areas of Marcel Breuer’s work.

The designer and architect Marcel Breuer numbers among the most important and prolific designers of the twentieth century. Today he is best known for his furniture. The tubular steel pieces created by Breuer during his tenure at the Bauhaus and during the following years, which have enjoyed unflagging popularity for decades, must be counted among the great classics of modernism. When one thinks of Breuer, the Wassily armchair, the Bauhaus stool or his famous cantilevered tubular steel chairs (Cesca, B35) quickly come to mind. To a degree equaled only by Wagenfeld’s legendary table lamp, these have become representative of the design philosophy and domestic culture of an entire era. Yet it was not only his tubular steel furniture that contributed to Breuer’s international success. The aluminum and molded plywood pieces from the 1930s also attained historical significance and had a lasting impact upon succeeding generations of designers.

Although Breuer advanced in just a few years’ time from a Bauhaus student to one of the leading furniture and interior designers of the twentieth century, he regarded himself first and foremost as an architect. As early as the mid-twenties, he considered building to be the primary aim of his work. After halting attempts in Europe and (beginning in 1937) the USA, which were largely attributable to the Great Depression and World War II, his architectural career gained considerable momentum toward the end of the 1940s. Breuer succeeded in expanding and refining the architectural vocabulary of modernism, first with the building of single-family homes and villas. Beginning in the fifties, he was able to realize a number of prestigious large-scale projects, such as the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the IBM research center La Gaude in southern France and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Until 1976, when he withdrew from professional work for health reasons, Breuer was one of the most successful and internationally renowned architects of his time.