Chairs – are you sitting comfortably?
What makes a good chair? Theo Zamenopoulos considers the factors that produce good design while sitting in his favourite place.
Design Essentials: are you sitting comfortably? - for iPod/iPhone
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Theo Zamenopoulos, of the OU design faculty, offers a glimpse into the ideological and historical context of design ideas and principles. With Emma Curtis, curator of the Design Museum, and Nathaniel Hepburn, curator of the Mascalls Art Gallery, Theo looks at the key ideas that emerged as the driving force behind design using specific examples from the history of chair design. This material forms part of The Open University course T217 Design Essentials.
No chair is an island
No design is an island, entire in itself, they are all part of an ongoing conversation about what is good design Here Theo Zamenopoulos gives some exa...
Vorsprung durch Technik: Michael Breuer’s B33
Emma Curtis, of the Design Museum, introduces the historical and ideological context of modernism in design. At the beginning of the 20th century new ...
Protest, provocation and social responsibility: Gerrit Rietveld’s Crate Chair
Designs don’t just have utilitarian or aesthetic functions they can also have economic, social and political ones. Here Emma Curtis, of the Design Mus...
Semantics and form: Tom Dixon’s Crown Chair
By the end of the 60s, modernist principles came under severe criticism. One aspect of this criticism of modernism was the narrow interpretation of ‘w...
Process-driven design: Konstantin Grcic’s Myto Chair
Theo Zamenopoulos discusses design where the process of designing has been instrumental for the design output. According to this perspective, the qual...
Nature-inspired design: Frank Gehry’s Cross Check Chair
Nature has always been an inspiration for designers, both for its beautiful forms but also for the ways it solves problems. Here Emma Curtis, of the D...
Less is more: Jasper Morrison’s Air-Chair
Is it possible to ‘over-design’ – to design beyond the functional requirements of a design? Here Emma Curtis, of the Design Museum, introduces a very ...
Form follows function: Jerszy Seymour's PlayStation chair
Theo Zamenopoulos introduces arguably one of the most influential but also controversial principles in design – that idea that ‘form follows function’...