Barcelona Chair of power distinguishes b/w privileged & downtrodden

It is a seat of civilisation which has got a bum rap in the Great tradition of history – despite its bottom-up view to the ethos of epochs. As the throne, the chair exemplified absolute power. As the seat of privilege, it distinguished the few who could rest their derrieres ceremonially, from those at the bottom of the hierarchy. It is as the seat of democratisation in the past century that the chair came into its own.

Seating not only reflected the changing political impulses of the age; it became the litmus test of 20th century cutting edge design. Still, a chair is ‘mere Furniture’ to rest the rear; it wouldn’t get pride of place in a gallery of high art, we thought. One of life’s continuing delights is to be proved wrong, as we were on the third floor of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, on our latest visit to Australia.

Before us was a permanent collection of 20th century iconic chairs, signifying the tidal wave of modernism: from Otto Wagner to Frank Lloyd Wright; Marcel Breur to Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe; Charles and Ray Eames to Giancarlo Piretti. These chairs testified how they had fused form and function as a paean to the changing rhythms of everyday lives, exploring new materials and mass production techniques, inaugurating a new design vocabulary and challenging earlier hierarchies of seating.

Funnily, architects designed most of these chairs. That designing a new chair was the test of architectural genius, was a popular refrain. This gallery was proof that the bum had been witness to it all. A sweeping glance triggered a sense of deja vu. We have cushioned our behinds on recognisably ‘inspired’, cannibalised and ‘adapted’ versions in our daily lives, using the term modern with abandon. Here was the conceptual source of that ‘modern’; we created our timeline with some of the chairs that drew us to them.

1903: Chair from the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow Hey! Wasn’t it like the high-backed ebony pair our friends Swami and Mahua owned, which involuntarily straightened the spine? The elegant ladder-back spine in ebonised oak acted as a screen, delineating spaces dramatically without clutter.

We learnt from the info panel that Scottish architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, father of the Glasgow style and a leading early Modernist designed the chair as well as Catherine Cranston’s Willow Tea Rooms, for which it was meant. The last of the tea rooms survives in Glasgow. In ‘remix’ form the chair survives in Delhi’s Kirti Nagar and Amar Colony as well.

1902-06: Otto Wagner’s armchair, Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna; Frank Lloyd Wright’s office chair, Larkin company administration building, Buffalo, New York Not particularly iconoclastic labels, but they heralded a revolution in perception. The taut minimalism of Otto Wagner’s upholstered armchair in ebonised wood with protective aluminium feet coverings and arm stripes, seemed so familiar.

But when the Austrian designer, architect, urbanist and teacher designed the chair and the building it was a blow from early Modern architecture against the Vienna court’s conservatism. Total design was the war cry of the age: from city planning to transport systems to chairs. Wagner modified the chair according to rank and function. ‘Ours’ had graced a boardroom.

The ‘lawgiver’ of functionalist design, American Frank Lloyd Wright, shaped his office chair out of steel, metal, oak and rubber. I instantly recognised the prehistoric mother of all office swivel chairs – including those that broke my heart each time one of my beautiful saris got caught in their wheels and tore. The chairs were integral to the first vertical, modern office building of its kind designed by Wright.

It boasted many firsts: steel Furniture, cantilevered desk chairs, glass doors, elevators, central air-conditioning, open office seating for 1,800 workers — and Wright’s ‘hung wall’ for the water closet to facilitate cleaning.

While Wagner and Wright designed these chairs, German Erich von Drygalski explored Antarctica (1901-03); the Wright brothers made the first powered flight (1903); the first cinema opened in Pittsburgh, US (1905); and Japan defeated Russia (1905). A century powered by science and technology had begun.

The chair continued at the frontline, as the world’s political skyline altered irretrievably after World War I. In
1919, German architect Walter Gropius started the Bauhaus school of modern design, training students to integrate art and technology to develop functional designs for mass production.

The faculty head, Marcel Breuer (Germany/US ), designed a cantilever steel tube chair, inspired by a bicycle frame. Its hardy descendents seat Indian office-goers to this day.

1928: Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand’s LC/4 Chaise Lounge Beckoning us was a sculptural reclining chair designed by the Bauhaus Frenchman Corbusier we Indians acclaim as the architect of Chandigarh, and his cousin Charlotte Perriand. Padded leather cushion and head-rest, chrome-plated tubular steel frame and matte black steel base, comprised Corbusier’s most successful design, admired and criticised equally on the comfort factor.

1929: Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair Close by was the leather-padded Barcelona chair, designed by architect and Bauhaus guru, for the German pavilion at Barcelona’s international exhibition. Rohe (Germany/US), who had said that designing a skyscraper, was easier than designing a good chair, created the first chair to stand on only two vertical elements – curved, chrome-plated steel legs, akin to ancient Roman folding stools. The purity of line, seen sideways, was breathtaking.

1930: Armchair 41, Alvar Aalto Well, well, a chair with a seat like a loose paper scroll! Experimenting with bending wood and lamination for mass production, Finnish architect Alvar Aalto brought to natural material the qualities of tubular steel – strength, resilience and the ability to be shaped. With the mantra of organic design, the chair was meant for the sanatorium Aalto designed in Paimio, which put Finland on the modern architectural map. The Paimio chair heralded a new direction in plywood and laminates and created generations of unknowingly grateful passengers in airports!