20th century furniture task 2 samburns

Design Response

Sam Burns s3330434

Contents

Introduction 2 Eileen Gray 3 Gray’s Furniture Design 4 Ideation 5 Resolution 8 Reflection

10

References

11

Introduction

This journal has been derived from a task in which students were asked to examine the life and work of a 20th century furniture designer and take inspiration from that designer and produce new items of furniture. This project enables students to gather an in depth understanding of that designer, analysing the key concepts and prominent themes evident in their body of work. Through critically analysing the work of another designer, students take the inspiration as the building blocks; yet have the freedom to respond to any aspect in which they choose.

Irish furniture designer and architect, Eileen Gray is the inspiration for the designs seen in this journal.

Eileen Gray 1878 - 1976

Eileen Gray was an Irish artist, furniture designer and architect who was quite unrecognized and neglected in her lifetime, although she is now regarded as one of the most significant figures in 20th Century furniture design and architecture, she was an extremely influential female figure in a male dominated design world, and a forerunner for the Modern Movement.

She was also seen as ‘an independent talent who influenced many, but never fitted in’ (The Design Museum, London).

After World War I, Gray’s work took quite a drastic change, her design style moved from ornate and decorative lacquer work to more minimal and elegant forms. She wanted cleaner and crisper forms with inexpensive materials; Her later work shows an engagement with pure form and the incorporation of industrially produced materials. Philip Garner has stated in his Book ‘Eileen Gray’, 2006 that Gray ‘had an intuitive ability to add an intangible extra dimension to an overtly straightforward design’.

Her work incorporated a range of design styles in the early 20th century, drawing links between Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism. Now she is seen as one of the pioneers of the Modern Movement, embracing the new technological era and the aesthetic notions of ‘less is more’.

Gray’s Furniture Design Key Concepts

Gray worked alongside the Modernist Movement, which had the prominent principles involving a rejection of history and ornament, and a view that design and technology could transform society. Gray explored minimal geometric forms throughout her furniture designs, yet they remained elegant and luxurious. Through some of her forms she also conveyed senses of humour, greatly evident in her ‘Bibendum’ Chair (1926).

Much of gray’s later work incorporated Leather upholstery and chromed tubular steel; Gray was one of the first to incorporate the chromed steel into furniture. Many of her chairs and lounge chairs incorporated these materials, and generally only in conjunction with each other.

Site Specificity played a major part in Gray’s designing, much of her furniture designs responded to the specific environment in which they were to be located. Gray worked on several refurnishing projects in her career, this meant she needed to garner an understanding of the spaces and designed accordingly. Whether it were to involve an alternate function to the furniture, or just a visual response to the surroundings. These notions are particularly evident in her furniture designs for the E1027 Villa. For example the ‘Chest with Pivoting Drawers’ (1929) was designed to fill the wall space between the glass pane doors, which lead out to the deck. The ‘Transat’ chair (1930) was designed in response to the deck chairs seen on the transatlantic ships, which could be viewed from the E1027 villa.

The ‘Folding Hammock Chair’ (1938) and the ‘E1027’ table (1930) are some examples of gray’s work in which incorporated another feature and dimension to them. A lounge chair which folds away, and a table in which can be adjusted to manoeuvre over a bed and become an over bed table.

All these ideas that Eileen expressed throughout her work have been understood and considered whilst designing the furniture in this journal.

Ideation

Eileen Gray’s Bibendum chair is the clear and direct influence for these two seating designs, a daybed/bench and a stool/pouf. These designs take on the same curvature evident in the Bibendum chair, consisting of similar tubular cushioned forms lying beside or on top of each other.

These seats are designed to be situated together as a pair, the idea being they would be located in a public foyer area, the leather allows for possibilities of a range of colours.

The leather-upholstered cushions reveal the sense of comfort similarly to Gray’s chair. The bench incorporates the use of chromed tubular bar, evident in many of Gray’s later furniture designs. These seats both intend to express a sense of humour much like Gray’s chair does. The bench seems to resemble tree logs laying side by side, and the stool aims to draw more distinct reference to the Bibendum character, now known as the Michelin Man, in which Gray took her inspiration from.

This chair takes reference from a few aspects of Gray’s work, through form, materials and function. It is a minimal chair with simple forms and repeated curves throughout the design.

This chair also responded to Gray’s idea in introducing a new dimension into her furniture, this is through the incorporation of a pivoting glass side table. This is a pane of glass, which pivots on the back leg of the chair; it can be positioned on either side of the chair. This allows the chair to have a few possibilities depending on where it is situated in a space.

The pivoting feature took direct inspiration from pivoting feature in Gray’s ‘Chest with Pivoting Drawers’. When retracted, the side table is hidden below the seat.

This design took most of its inspiration from the idea of site specificity, which was a prominent aspect to Gray’s furniture designs. This desk and accompanying chair are designed to be located in a small space, possibly a bedroom.

The desk is designed to be placed in a corner of a room, it has only three chromed steel legs in order to allow for more working space around the open corner of the glass table top. It has a small amount of desk space, yet there is another glass shelf, in which is dimensioned to fit A4 sheets of paper or folders. The desk is designed in this way in order to maximize working space whilst attempting to remain minimal and elegant.

The seat is leather upholstered cushion, I have not introduced a chair back into the design, this is due to me never using a chair back when I am drawing or working on my laptop, I work over the desk. The chair incorporates the same curve seen in the desk, and again, it is three legged. By having three legs, it removes the possibility of having the legs on the chair and desk catch on each other.

Eileen produced many screens at the beginning of her design career. This design takes inspiration from her screens and their geometry through positive and negative space, but also introduces another element into the design; it is both a screen and a shelf.

It is a screen in the way that it can be retraced and folder away, but it is also a shelf whereby sections can be opened out to function as a shelf. This design tries to maximize space, through the introduction of two furniture products in one. The shelves can all be changed with a multitude of variations, they can also be opened out either side of the screen, it has bidirectional hinges. This allows for the design to be easily situated in varying spaces. When not in use, they locate back into the main screen bod, through a tightly fitted system.

There are two hinged components that are used in conjunction to create the shelves, the lower support section and the shelf top. These both open out and the support slots into a groove located on the other section. The materials used in this design would be sheet aluminium, and there would be a hidden discrete hinge system. It could possible be anodized in varying colours.

Resolution

40

400

50

2.

R4

12

12

28

30

R1

460

R1

772

8

2 R1

884

500 300

800

250

25

370

25

25

0

.5

2 R4

Reflection

Eileen Gray has been a very interesting designer to take influence from and respond to. Her work remains timeless; it can be viewed and examined still to this day in a contemporary context, her work remains very influential. Gray had quite a small body of work, yet produced an array of very successful items of furniture. What I enjoyed most about Gray’s work was her amazing ability to understand furniture, and how furniture acts and responds to the surrounding architecture and space.

This exercise has enabled me to truly gather an understanding of Gray’s body of work. It has shown me that it is extremely challenging to design successful pieces of furniture in a minimal way, keeping design simple and allowing the forms to control the work is in itself a challenge. Eileen managed to create minimal items of furniture, yet they were still very elegant and inspiring. I had to clearly examine what I was wanting to design, and construct it purely on the function, and introduce small aesthetic elements throughout. Through my design development I discovered that there was a fine line between ‘too little’ and ‘too much’. Often felt the desire to introduce more into the designs, which tended to be unnecessary.

References

Adam, P. (2008). Eileen Gray: Her Life and Work. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel Espegel, S. (2013). Eileen Gray: Objects and Furniture Design. Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa Garner, P (2006). Eileen Gray. London: Taschen Rault, J (2011). Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity. Surrey: Ashgate Rowlands, P. (2002). Eileen Gray. San Francisco: Chroniclebooks Aram Design. http://www.eileengray.co.uk The Design Museum (2014). https://designmuseum.org/designers/eileen-gray Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/e/eileen-gray/ Finney, S. Eileen Gray and Modernist Architecture. The culture Trip. http://theculturetrip.com/europe/ireland/articles/eileen-gray-the-essence-of-modernist-architecture/