SHIRO KURAM ATA GLASS CHAIR 1976
DESIGN & SOCIETY TASK
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Hamish Maggs_ 3335019_June 2015
Shiro Kuramata Transcendence of Culture By Hamish Maggs
Contents Essay on Shiro Kuramata Glass Chair Case Study How High The Moon Case Study Glass Chair Analysis Concept Sketches Final Concepts Bibliography
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Shiro Kuramata: Transcendence of Culture Shiro Kuramata (1934-1991) started his life in design early, at the Tokyo Polytechnic, studying furniture making. Finishing in 1953 at the age of 19, he went on to work in Teikoku kizai, literally translating to ‘Empire Equipment’, a furniture store. In 1956 he finished his studies at Interior Design at the Kuwazawa Institute for Design. Despite this early design start it wasn’t until his late 30’s that Kuramata’s design prowess came to the fore. In 1957, Kuramata began work for a small department store called San-Ai, designing showcases, window and floor displays. He went on to work for an even larger retail company called Matsuya, as a freelance designer. After Kuramata’s education and early works, he founded his own design practice in 1965. Within this firm he developed several designs over the next few years. However he became an overnight success with his S-shaped design “Drawer in an Irregular Form”, in 1977. This office modern classic was originally made by Fujiko in Tokyo for a brief period before being produced by the Italian manufacturer Cappallini in 1986. The pair of drawer units stood as tall office pieces, capable of filing reams of paper. One unit was
bent in a lateral sideways ’s’ where as the other had the ’s’ shape in a face plane. The piece was an exploration in preconceived forms. Why should we assume a drawer must be rectangular? Standing 1.7m tall and almost 70 cm, this ‘dancing’ drawer unit turned one of the most classically solid units of furniture into a light and dynamic piece of art. This radical experimentation with existing ideas would set the tone for Kuramata’s work for the rest of his design career. In the coming years, he explored the weightlessness and structural contradiction both in his architecture and his furniture. Experimenting with glass, terrazzo and metal meshes to explore these themes, Kuramata developed his own unique design style that not only defined Japanese design but also enthralled the world. So much so in fact that in 1981 he joined one of his inspirational figures Ettore Sottass’s collective ‘Memphis’ based in Milan, Italy. Enjoying Sottass’s playful spirit and use of bold and vibrant colour, Kuramata continued to produce works with the Memphis group.
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Shiro Kuramata (1934-1991)
“...I believe that -for meborders hardly exist. In that sense, I feel I have no nationality�
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Kuramata. S
“Kuramata had a great sense of whimsy, but he was also a master of minimalism.”
Webb M.
Kuramata came to his design peak during the 70’s and 80’s winning several prestigious design awards, including the ‘mainichi industrial design prize’ in 1972 and ‘japan cultural design award’ in 1981. It was also during this period that his most influential pieces were designed, including his ‘glass chair’ in 1976, ‘miss blanche’ 1988 and possibly his most famous work ‘How High the Moon’ in 1986. But how did this work manage to bridge the divide between East and West design? What was it about Kuramata’s work that allowed this transcendence of cultural aesthetics? The answer lies in his furniture and one of the finest examples is the “Glass Chair” The ‘Glass Chair’ design was, according to Kuramata, held on to until technology could recreate it accurately to his concept. Designed after seeing ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ the design is certainly futuristic. A new glass to glass adhesive was used to create a tense structure of clear planes barely defined by their thin edges of dark, creating the effects of weightlessness and fragility.
Despite the material choice, the chair is perfectly functional. Its large transparent linear planes create a shape without mass, only defined by the dark edges created by the sheets of glass. This piece was more an exploration of materials as well as the psychology surrounding those materials, understanding people’s unease due to association with materials, forcing people to consider what they sit on and how they sit due to the chair’s naturally brittle, sharp and delicate nature. The straight lines force you to consider the structure of the chair and the materials used, rather than a form, which is what is usually considered with furniture. This thoughtful and playful nature would continue to dominate Kuramata’s work until his death.
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The Glass Chair (1976) 4
“...he always created the glorious illusion that the suggestive is more powerful than the real.”
Bramante. G
“How High the Moon” was his next distinctive work. Created in 1986 the chair was designed originally for the ‘Vitra Edition’ project, a bold step to the future from a company that had sat on the licences for the Charles Eames works, as well as high end ‘design art’ pieces. How High the Moon was Kuramata’s contribution. Made from expanded steel mesh the chair is hollow and has a sense of weightlessness. But in it we can see Kuramata’s poetry and deeper meaning. The mesh, normally used to reinforce plaster, is normally never seen and to get it to bend in such precise shapes has been likened by Deyan Sudjic to “Alchemy” , requiring precision and man-hours. Like the “Glass Chair”, the “How High the Moon” chair makes you think about how and what you sit on. The outer bubble or skin with no structure or weight baring member makes us nervous at first to sit on it and we consider weight and density, again showing us Kuramata’s playful nature. These two examples also help us with our question, how did Shiro Kuramata manage to boldy take his designs satisfy both the differing tastes of Eastern and Western aesthetics? But how do these chairs reflect Kuramta’s design appeal to the West. It lies in what ISN’T there rather than what is. The old form follows function
is a tired and commonly misinterpreted expression most closely associated with the modernist movement, however it’s principle is that of removal. Remove everything that is unnecessary and what you are left with will be beautiful. And it is for this reason we can clearly see why Kuramata’s works are beautiful. They are all about absence and removal. Removal of body or visible means of support. And it is this absence that makes Kuramta’s work beautiful. To understand how remarkable this universal appeal really is, an understanding of Japan as a nation is vital. The Japanese culture was one rooted in several hundred years of tradition, discipline and ceremony. It was a culture that looked at materials very differently to that of the West, believing that the value of their structures was not in their physical substance but in their spiritual significance. With the firestorms of WWII still fresh in the mind of the nation, Japan had to rebuild itself. The West absorbed much of the Japanese culture before the war. It’s art, understated lines and negative space inspired much of the art nouveau style. However this was not all a one way. Japan adopted much of Western culture. Le Corbusier, for example, worked closely with a number of Japanese 5
designers including Kunio Maekawa. However the West’s perception of Japan lagged well behind what was ACTUALLY happening in Japan. While it’s designers and architects had become some of the most exotic and experimental, during the post war era, they were dismissed with the perception that they were “little more than plagiarists, producing cheap copies of Western originals”. This arguably had the effect of further separation of the East and the West, making the Japanese design world very insular and even less accessible. Kuramata was one of the first generation of designers to break through this barrier, with works featuring in ‘Domus’, the Milan architectural and design journal, in 1968. Shiro Kuramata died at the age of 57, but his influence reached beyond these years. His work embodies the Bauhaus and Stanley Kubrick’s future. A designer, architect, poet and teacher, Kuramata’s work has no boundaries in what it teaches us about both design and philosophy of design.
How High The Moon (1986) 6
Glass Chair Analysis “My expectations of seeing interiors and furniture for a space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey... ended in disappointment... what kind of furniture I would design instead lingered with me...”
Kuramata. S
The “Glass Chair” (1976) was an amazing feat of engineering and design with Kuramata pushing his vision of the future into the present. The idea spawned after he saw the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In it he saw existing furniture and felt “disappointment” at the safe choices made by the director. Working with such a fragile material as glass was difficult but Kuramata took a very Japanese approach to the material, looking at it’s spirituality rather than its functionality...
The design also embodies Kuramata’s curious nature and love of practical jokes, keeping us on our toes and a little unsure of ourselves when we sit in it. It also makes us consider how it was made and begs us to enquire, a character trait that made Kuramata the great designer that he undoubtedly was.
“It may be that the chair will abruptly fall into pieces, and I feel that is not necessarily a bad thing. Glass gives one sensation of looking at the past when it smashes, but looking as well at a well polished surface gives us a glimpse of the future.” Despite this extensive testing was done to ensure the structural stability of the glass chair and it embodies much of Kuramata as a person, designer and philosopher. As a design it removes all unnecessary distraction forcing us to focus on it’s simplicity and absence of matter; of solid body. It is clean and simple but has the impractical of any of the outrageous designs coming from Memphis at the time 7
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Concept Sketches
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Final Concepts
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Bibliography Bramante, G. ”Obituary”, 1991, The Architectural Review (Archive : 1896-2005), vol. 189, no. 1129, pp. 9. Webb, M. “Last word: Flights of fantasy”,1997, Interiors, 156(10), 142. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/221527935?accountid=13552 “News&reviews: Soane restoration”, 1991, The Architectural Review (Archive : 1896-2005), vol. 189, no. 1129, pp. 4-4, 9. Kathyrn B. Hiesinger and Felice Fischer, Japanese Design: A Survey since 1950, 1994, cat. 95, p. 105. Giovannini, J. 1999, “Shiro Kuramata exhibition”, I D, vol. 46, no. 5, pp. 177 Schambelan, E. (2012, 01). “Postmodernism: Style and subversion, 1970-1990”. Artforum International., 50, 213-214. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/914171236?accountid=13552 Czerwinski, M. “Design Museum; Fifty Chairs That Changed The World”, 2009, Octopus Publishing Sudjic, D. “Shiro Kuramata; Essays & Writings”, 2000, Phaidon Press
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