Architects Take a Seat: How Architects Express Design Philosophy Through Furniture

Styles of buildings change with the times, and fashionable furniture shifts with the trends, but when the architect designing a skyscraper is also creating a place to sit, you get an incredible fusion of form and function. In exploring why architects design furniture, we’ll highlight chairs from modern masters like Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Erro Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many others. We'll also examine why many of today’s leading architects take the time to design furniture. You’ll see the work of Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Shigeru Ban, Dominique Perrault, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Mayne, and Zaha Hadid. Join us for a glimpse into the creative thinking of a variety of renowned architects as expressed through their inventive furniture design.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify individual chairs as the work of specific architects.
• Observe the similarities between important design movements and the stylistic characteristics of the chairs that came from specific eras.
• Describe the role of manufacturing technology as represented in the form of furniture.
• Discover the structural principles behind various chairs and learn how they underscore the design preferences of each architect.