M For manufacturing & materials
How new technologies influence chair design

Until the start of the twentieth century, few chairs were made in anything but the traditional shape, relying on decoration as a means of differentiation, but designers were quick to apply new materials and manufacturing processes developed throughout the century to this basic product.

Case Study: Chair No 14
This was probably the first mass-produced chair and was designed and first manufactured by Michael Thonet & Sons in 1865. It is still in production today.
The original method of production involved boiling beechwood strips in glue and then bending them using iron moulds. Thonet had set up sales offices in major cities which enabled the chair to be sold worldwide but the high humidity in tropical areas caused the glue to dissolve. In response to this problem Thonet developed a new method of bending solid wood with steam and replaced the glued wooden peg joints with screws. One advantage of this method of production meant that the chairs could be shipped and sold ‘flatpacked’. A crate measuring 1 cubic metre could hold 36 dismantled chairs.

Mass-production
Some designers experimented with new processes in order to meet the need for mass-produced furniture. Others looked at the materials used for the mass-production of other items and applied them for the first time to making chairs.

Case study: B3, or Wassily Chair
Although tubular steel had been used for public furniture – in hospitals, cars and aeroplanes – since the late nineteenth century, Marcel Breuer’s B3 Club armchair of 1925 was the first of its kind.

At the time Breuer was the director of the wood workshop at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau. He took his idea from the tubular frame of his bicycle but the bike’s manufacturer was not interested, so Breuer worked with a plumber to produce the initial prototypes from cold-bent nickel-plated tubular steel. In 1926 he founded a manufacturing company, Standard Mobel, in order to market the designs and after some initial changes the chair went into production. It could be shipped and sold disassembled: more than 50 chairs could be packed into a crate measuring 1 cubic metre. The chair was named ‘Wassily’ in honour of Breuer’s colleague at the Bauhaus, the painter Wassily Kandinsky.

Materials and structures
In the early 1920s many designers were experimenting with alternative structures for chairs. The production of a cantilevered chair was a challenge that inspired many of them. The Dutch architect Mart Stam was probably the first to achieve this but it was the B64 Chair designed by Marcel Breuer in 1928 that became the most famous example: it is still in production today. In the 1950s Verner Panton worked on a cantilevered chair to be constructed from a single piece of material. He achieved this in 1955 with his S-Chair, which was made from moulded laminated wood. This was a forerunner of his most famous cantilevered chair, the Panton Chair, which is mass-produced today in polypropylene.
Contemporary designers are still exploring the possibilities of creating a cantilevered chair in different materials. The Aluminium Flange Chair is manufactured to order by Foundation 33. It is made from two continuous strips of 4mm thick aluminium that are bent and welded to create a central structural flange. This is then bent in three different directions to form the chair. As the material is weak the central flange is essential to provide strength. Although the chair will support the weight of the body, even a simple sideways push will result in the structure wobbling.

Computers
The development of computer-aided design and manufacture (CAD/CAM) has opened up many new design opportunities. As a result, designers are now creating chairs that in the past would have been completely impossible to manufacture successfully.

Case study: Slice Chair
The designer of this chair, Mathias Bengtsson, was inspired to create an organic piece that explored and made obvious the actual process of manufacture.
Bengtsson was born in Denmark and, following his graduation from the Danish Design School in Copenhagen, joined the Royal College of Art furniture course in 1998. The first version of this chair made its debut at his final year show at the RCA, London.
The chair form is modelled in 3D on a computer, then sliced into layers by the software. Each slice has a unique size and profile, much like a giant butterfly, which is cut out of a sheet of material. These 2-D pieces are stacked one on top of the other to create the 3D form. The cutting pattern of the sheets has been researched carefully to reduce waste to a minimum.