2009

Straw, Happy Birthday Bauhaus

The bent tubular steel is heralded as the symbol of modernity in furniture design ever since the radical innovations designed by Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer in the 1920s. The industrial technique completely innovated house-hold design and matured to an undisputed iconic element of design vocabulary.

The STRAW Chair pays homage to the classic cantilever chair. By relying only on non-reinforced steel for stability, it visually and physically challenges tradition and implements a controversial detail into the canon of design: The kinked tube.

The kink, being the most immediate way to deform a tube, revolutionizes tubular steel furniture's esthetic appearance. The STRAW Chair contradicts the disciplined character of the Bauhaus classics. It seems spontaneous, as if folded by hand.

In 2010 the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam added the STRAW cantilever chair to its permanent collection.

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Vase Plant, Helm Rinderknecht
2009