5 Iconic Furniture Designers of the 20th century

When it comes to designers, chances are you are well versed with clothing and accessory veterans like Louis Vuitton, Donatella Versace or contemporary designers like Alexander McQueen. But what about furniture and interior décor? These master craftsmen and genius designers have changed the way modern man looks at furniture. Yet, their names are only well known in certain circles, while their genius goes unacknowledged by the larger population.  

Here is a list of 5 iconic 20th century furniture designers who revolutionized that way we look at modern office furniture.

Charles and Ray Eames 

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The quintessential modernist couple designed and created furniture, buildings and other art forms including exhibitions and film. They founded and spear headed one of the most creative design offices in post World War II America and their work reflected their contagious enthusiasm for life and art. Together they created some of the most iconic furniture of the 20th Century that shaped the way people looked at objects and designs. 

One of their most famous designs is the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. The designer couple wasn’t looking to change the world, when they set out to design a chair that had the ‘receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt’, as a birthday gift to friend. However, they did just that with this iconic chair which has since evolved into a hallmark of high end executive office furniture. 

Marcel Breuer 

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This famous Hungarian-American architect and furniture designer was one of the pioneers of the “modern” style of design. He was one the most influential designers of the 20th Century. Breuer was also a very successful architect, known for designing buildings like the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the monastic Master Plan and Church at St John’s Abbey in Minnesota. 

Marcel Breuer’s designs have become representative of the philosophy and domestic culture of an entire era. He is best known for his work with extruded steel to create lightweight metal furniture. Inspired by the strength and flexibility of his bicycle, he applied the same material and construction principles to chair design and thus his master piece, the ‘Wassily Chair’ came to life.

Phillippe Starck

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Son of a French aeronautical engineer, Starck jump started his design career by designing the interiors of two nightclubs in Paris. Impressed by his work, the President of France, Francois Mitterand asked him to refurbish one of his private apartments.

Starck’s designs are subversive, intelligent and always interesting, making him one of the great designers of our time. The Hudson visitor chair by Starck is amongst the most iconic furniture designs of the 20th Century. It was designed by Starck for the Hudson Hotel in New York City. Each Hudson chair takes 8 hours to polish. It is included in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Jean Prouve

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Born in Nancy, France, Jean Prouve was a craftsman, designer, rchitect, manufacturer, teacher and an engineer. His career spanned over sixty years during which he produced furniture, prefabricated houses and facades. His work had a stylistic appeal that combined bold elegance with economy. 

While designing the Standard Chair, Jean Prouve took into account the fact that chairs bear the most weight on their back legs. Tabular steel piping was used in the front legs while the back legs were made from voluminous hollow sections that passed the weight to the ground.  

Jean Prouve is considered one of the most innovative architects and furniture designers of the 20th Century. His life and work has been inspirational to many. The Standard Chair reflects his artistry in every way and serves as a beacon of modern designing philosophy.

Mies Van Der Rohe 

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He was one of the most influential architects and designers of the 20th Century. Mies’ minimalistic style proved to be extremely popular with the elite and the masses. His famous aphorism, ‘less is more’ is still widely used by many. By emphasizing open spaces and revealing the material used in construction, he helped define modern architecture.

Mies was highly respected in Europe for his innovative structures which include the famous Barcelona Pavilion for which he designed his most iconic creation, The Barcelona Chair. It is one of the most recognized objects of the 20th Century and is a tribute to the marriage of design and fine craftsmanship.

Meis’ work, radiates his confidence, rationality and elegance. Beyond merely affecting our lives, his works endow them with greater significance and beauty.

Office cubicles are not as bad as you think

With the rising trend of open plan offices, the old office staple — the office cubicle is fast going out of style. In a world where office culture, collaboration and transparency are the buzzwords that most companies love to throw around, it is easy to see why the humble office cubicle has been underestimated and cast aside. Despite what you may think, it is vital if not necessary to separate fact from fiction and truly understand both the benefits and pitfalls of office cubicles before you take a stance on their necessity in the work place.

The office cubicle was born almost 50 years ago and was the brainchild of Robert Propst. Originally created to increase productivity in the work place, Propst’s idea was to create a work station where office goers had more space to work, while office partitions would provide them with a semblance of privacy. Though he originally created the cubicle as a modular workplace solution, he eventually grew to dislike his own creation as it evolved into a rigid geometric structure that lacked vibrancy. In an interview in 1998, Propst commented on the misuse of the cubicle, “… not all organizations are intelligent and progressive. Lots are run by crass people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes. They make little bitty cubicles and stuff people in them. Barren, rat-hole places.”

Propst’s criticisms reflect the current consensus on office cubicles and many a blogger and op-ed writer have taken great joy in vilifying the cubicle to mythic proportions. However, the fact of the matter remains that the cubicle in the right office landscape is still a very good idea. According to The New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger, “Cubicles are the perfect middle ground between private offices, which are impractical and waste space, and entirely open rooms of desks, which lack privacy and are woefully inefficient because they require people to keep files, books, and personal possessions somewhere else. I don’t hear people using the phrase ‘office landscape’ much anymore, but the reality is that the fundamentals of the cubicle—a waist-high partition, allowing privacy when seated and a little bit of wall space, and a built-in countertop with lots of horizontal surface—are absolutely reasonable and right.”

However, in the new millennium, with many large tech firms choosing open plan offices to foster a collaborative environment, office cubicles have been appropriated as a symbol of the 21^st century office drone. The question arises, are open plan offices are really as productive as one is led to believe? A recent study by researchers Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear found that “the loss of productivity due to noise distraction… was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices, and the tasks requiring complex verbal process were more likely to be disturbed than relatively simple or routine tasks.”  Similarly, according to Steven Orfield, president of Orfield Laboratories an architectural and product-research firm, the brain is often perceptually loaded in an open plan office layout, which can make it harder to focus. Supporting this is a study from Bosti Associates that states that almost 60% of an employee’s time is spent on tasks that require quiet focus while only 40% is spent on collaborative tasks. Which can bring one to the conclusion that when it comes to productivity, open plan offices may not be the best idea.

Consequently, just because open plan offices do not bolster productivity as well as we thought, does that make a convincing case in favor of office partitions? Research by Kim and de Dear finds that enclosed offices are ideal when it comes to bolstering productivity and comfort in the workplace. However, enclosed offices for an entire organization are simply not feasible or practical. Keeping this in mind, it is necessary to appropriate the office cubicle for the modern office landscape as it really does represent the best of both open plan and enclosed offices, while being convenient to install and extremely cost effective. Keeping the current criticism of the office cubicle at the fore, it is important for office designers and planners to use office cubicles in a more organic way, so as to avoid creating a geometric maze of cubicles or a cube farm. Using cubicles to create organic structures can actually increase collaboration and foster communication, while providing employees with a certain degree of privacy. According to a report by Herman Miller Research, “…the cubicle is especially right when it becomes just one of the features of the entire office landscape, joined by other space types such as common areas, meeting rooms, private offices, and cafés or public areas.”

After evaluating the pros and cons of the office cubicle, it is evident that cubicle by itself is not as bad as popular culture suggests. However, the use of the office cubicle needs to evolve in to something more dynamic and organic contrary to its iconic rigidity. This doesn’t mean that we need to re-invent the wheel, we simply need to reconfigure long standing traditional office elements to meet the changing needs of the modern office landscape.

Browse through an exclusive collection of office furniture at www.courtofficefurniture.com. Consult our experts for all your office decor related needs and to help you choose the perfect furniture for the workplace.

References:

The Cubicle Turns 50 by Andrew Burmon

Journal of Environmental Psychology

Forward Thinking: Why the Ideas from the Man Who Invented Cubicles Still Make Sense

Research: Cubicles Are the Absolute Worst by Sarah Green