event news EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI

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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
31
Photo taken of the ASKO exhibition stand at the Koln fair in 1968 - featuring BALL chairs, Cognac chairs and the Kantarelli table
Exhibition at the Kunsthalle Helsinki,
June 12 - August 10, 2003
The Kunsthalle Helsinki recently held an extensive
exhibition showcasing the wide-ranging work of
Finnish designer Eero Aarnio (b. 1932).
With their bold colours and Pop-inspired forms,
Aarnio's Ball, Pastil and Bubble chairs captured the
imagination of the trendy design set of the 1960s,
a time when plastic revolutionised both furniture and
interior design. Aarnio's designs have retained their
appeal as firm favourites of the fashion world and pop
culture, recently achieving new heights of popularity
thanks to the current retro boom.
Featured exhibits included famous icons of
contemporary design, all-purpose seating, public
furniture and a selection of original drafts spanning
four decades.
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Visitors were invited to see and try out the
quintessential Finnish sitting experience of today
and yesterday in the lap of Aarnio's classic chairs.
Aarnio is known for his sculptural fibreglass furniture,
his use of vibrantly coloured plastic, innovative
geometrical forms and sound grasp of ergonomics.
Eero Aarnio is one of Finland's most internationally
acclaimed designers. His most famous works date
from the 1960s, an era characterised by the arrival
of new technology, rapid economic growth and the
birth of the Finnish welfare state.
In addition to world-renowned classics, his key works
include lesser-known all-purpose chairs including the
Polaris, UPO-022 and UPO-023, all widely used in
venues ranging from theatres and assembly halls to
schools and ice hockey stadiums. The office and
public furniture Aarnio designed for Martela, Asko
and EFG forms a major part of his oeuvre, which
also extends to interiors, exhibitions, door handles
and other smaller items.
In the wake of post-war urbanisation and economic
restructuring, Finnish society witnessed far-reaching
changes, with consumer goods coming to occupy a
more and more focal role in everyday life.
Furniture and interior design proliferated in a new
range of free, playful and futuristic shapes and
colours.
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Nearly forty years of Finnish cultural history are
encapsulated in Aarnio's designs, especially in his
famous Ball Chair. A telephone by Ericsson was
installed in the first prototype in the 1960s; today,
the Ball Chair is being fitted for broadband !
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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Photo taken at Eero's home in Helsinki 2002
Taken in his design studio at home in Helsinki in 1967
Eero Aarnio was born in 1932 in Finland, where he
still lives today. One of the pioneers of plastic furniture
design, he graduated from the Institute of Industrial
Arts in Helsinki in 1957 and opened an interior and
industrial design office in 1962.
Inspired by new materials and free from the restraints
of more conventional materials, Aarnio used plastic
to realize innovative forms. Initially, Aarnio's designs
were hand crafted out of natural materials. Of note
from this era was the wicker stool which he later
translated into fiberglass, named the Mushroom
stool. In the 1960s, he began experimenting with
fiberglass.
Mushroom rattan 1960
Ball Chair (Globe Chair) 1966
Tableware, scoop, bottle opener, ashtray 1966
Cognac Chair (V.S.O.P.) and Kanttarelli Tables 1966
Pastil Chair (Pastilli, Gyro) 1967
Bubble Chair (Bing Bong) 1968
Serpentine Sofa 1968
Imperial Armchair, Sofa and Table 1970
Tomato Chair 1971
White fibreglass chair with armrests 1972 (prototype)
Red fiberglass chair U-022 Chair U-023, 1972
Pony (Mustang) 1973
'Avec' Chair 1979
Plywood Chair with chromed legs 1986 (prototype)
Copacabana Table 1991
Screw Tables 1992
Cacadu Armchair 1993 (prototype)
Delfin Armchair 1994
Parabel Table 1994
Puzzle Chair 1994 (prototype)
Triangle Chair 1994 (prototype)
Furniture handles 1996 for Valli & Valli (Italy)
Formula Chair 1998
Mushroom production in fibreglass 1998
Vitra miniature Ball Chair 2000
Parabel Dining Table 2002
Focus Chair 2002
Tipi 2002
Eero photo taken for the Stendig catalogue in 1973
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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Ball Chair - 1966
A Ball Chair is a "room within a room" with a
cozy and calm athmosphere, protecting outside
noises and giving a private space for relaxing or
having a phonecall. Turning around its own axis
on the base the view to the outer space is
variable for the user and thus he is not
completely excluded from world outside.
"It is something between a piece of furniture and
a piece of architecture and at the same time
embodies both the mobile and the established,
the fixed."
"The idea of the chair was very obvious.
We had moved to our first home and I had
started my free-lance career in 1962.
We had a home but no proper big chair, so I
decided to make one, but some way a really
new one.
After some drawing I noticed that the shape of
the chair had become so simple that it was
merely a ball. I pinned the full scale drawing on
the wall and sat in the chair to see how my
head would move when sitting inside it.
Being the taller one of us I sat in the chair and
my wife drew the course of my head on the wall.
This is how I determined the height of the chair.
Since I aimed at a ball shape, the other lines
were easy to draw, just remembering that the
chair would have to fit through a doorway.
After this I made the first prototype myself using
an inside mould, which has been made using the
same principle as a glider fuselage or wing.
I covered the plywood body mould with wet paper
and laminated the surface with fiberglass,
rubbed down the outside, removed the mould
from inside, had it upholstered and added the leg.
In the end I installed the red telephone on the
inside wall of the chair. The naming part of the
chair was easy, the BALL CHAIR was born."
The result was great. It was the birth of one of the
most remarkable chairs in the furniture history of
the 20th century.
This first hand made Ball Chair is still standing in
Eero's house. It was this first Ball Chair two young
managers from the company Asko discovered when
visiting Eero to see some pine wood designs. They
were immediatly impressed and convinced of the
phenomenal design.
It took a few years to get the Ball Chair into
production. In 1966 the Ball Chair was presented at
the international furniture fair in Cologne. It was the
sensation of the fair, the international breakthrough
for Eero Aarnio and the start for a whole line of
fibreglass designs by Aarnio.
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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The pastil chair was designed to utilise the void within the hollow mass of the Ball chair
Eero out on his holiday house lake - fishing from a
pastil chair
"Assume a Round Chair" book cover by Eero Aarnio,
2003
Pastil Chair by Eero Aarnio 1967
A new round chair would fit in this space, and so the
diameter of the Pastil is the same as the opening of
the Ball Chair
One year after he had designed the Pastil Chair in
1968 Eero Aarnio received the American Industrial
Award for this chair. The New York Times wrote about
the Ball Chair and Pastil Chair at this time: "the most
comfortable forms to hold up the human body"
"The Pastil shape can be looked at from many
angles. i.e. the product shape comes from a
small sweetie, pastil, but in this case the idea was,
that a lot of empty, cushioned space is sent to the
other side of the world inside the Ball Chair.
.
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I made the first prototype out of polystyrene which
helped me to verify the measurements, ergonomics
and rocking ability
Because fibreglass is always laminated by hand on a
smooth mould the visible surface is perfectly shiny but
the other surface slightly rough. I have always wanted
to cover or to hide this side of my fibreglass products.
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In the Pastil it is ideally on the inside and thus totally
invisible."
It is amazing how comfortable one can sit a in such a
shiny, oversized "sweetie" slightly turning and rocking
side-, back- and forwards.
The material - fibreglass - allows to keep the Pastil
Chair outdoors throughout the year. In summer it is
big fun to sit in the Pastil Chair floating on water, in
winter gliding down a small hill with tremendous
speed.
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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Bubble Chair - 1968
Based on the idea of the Ball Chair
the Bubble Chair is a reduction of this
design.
Originally called the "BING BONG" chair by
ASKO. It was later changed to "BUBBLE"
by Charles Stendig ( american importer )
As Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said:
Less is more! A masterpiece of reduction.
Aarnio about Bubble Chair:
"After I had made the Ball Chair I wanted
to have the light inside it and so I had the
idea of a transparent ball where light comes
from all directions.
"VERTIGO" CD music cover for Groove Armada
The only suitable material is acrylic which
is heated and blown into shape like a soap
bubble.
Since I knew that the dome-shaped
skylights are made in this way I contacted
the manufacturer and asked if it would be
technically possible to blow a bubble that is
bigger than a hemisphere. The answer was
Yes.
I had a steel ring made, the bubble was blown
and cushions were added and the chair was
ready. And again the name was obvious:
BUBBLE."
Eero Aarnio's grand-daughters at play
'There is no nice way to make a clear pedestal'
Eero Aarnio notes. That is the lucky reason
why the Bubble Chair hangs from the ceiling.
Like the Ball Chair the Bubble Chair also
impresses the user by the special accoustic.
The Bubble Chair swallows the sounds and
you feel isolated inside in a pleasant way,
even when you are in a crowded place.
EXPO 2000 Hannover - Cycle Bowl - Blue Box
At the EXPO 2000 in Hannover eleven Bubble
Chairs were installed in the Cycle Bowl
"Blue Box" of the Grüne Punkt Deutschland
Pavillion as small, individual information
spaces whithin the library.
The Norwegean phonecompany Telenor has
installed some Bubble Chairs in the entrance
hall of their new building in Oslo to offer calm
"rooms" for mobile phoning.
The transparent chair is used in music videos,
advertising and fashion magazines.
Donnatella Versace in a bubble chair on the water
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Book Cover by Taschen
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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Tomato Chair - 1971
Aarnio about Tomato Chair:
"A product idea can come about in many different ways and here
is one of them.
I realized that Pastil Chair floats and carries the person who sits
in it in water, but it is very rickety.
If there were three items like two great armrests and the back of
the chair it would be more stable, and this is how the idea of the
TOMATO Chair was born.
The name reflects its looks: looking at the chair from the front
there are two round shapes i.e. two circles like in the word
tOmatO."
The Tomato Chair visualizes how Aarnio plays with round shapes.
At the first sight the Tomato Chair looks complicated, but
the second look shows an intelligent combination of 3 circles with
same diameter, two of them being armrests, one stretched to a
comfortable back, and even a fourth half circle up side down
giving the chair a consequent seat.
When looking at the Tomato Chair from different angles it is more
than a chair, it is a sculpture.
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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PONY - re-edition of the 1973 Mustang
New moulds for the foam parts had be to made and
a new suitable fabric had to be woven. A lot of small
details had to be worked over just like in developing
a completely new model.
The strech fabric is produced by a weavery doing
fabrics for car, train and airplane seats.
Children are attracted by the bright colors and the
uncoventional forms of Eero Aarnio's designs and
especially the Pony looks like an overdimensional
toy. But it is not the toy Eero Aarnio has intended to
create with the Pony. The dimensions are conformed
to adult's size. The Pony shows the play of fantasy
which is so characteristic for Eero Aarnio and in a
comportable seat it might carry you to unknown
fields of your own imagination.
Aarnio: "A chair is a chair, is a chair, is a chair ... but a
seat does not necessarily have to be a chair. It can be
anything as it is ergonomically correct.
A seat could even be a small and soft Pony on which
you can ride or sit sideways. The Pony has a
moulded foam body, feet and ears which are
connected by a tube frame and all parts are
upholstered with stretch fabric
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EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
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Screw Tables - 1992
Aarnio:
"I have always studied my surroundings, the
nature, buildings, objects, out of scale, in which
case big can be small and visa versa.
With this in mind a small metal screw serves the
function of a table: a spiral part is a thin table leg
and the head is the broadening table top. It is only
a question of scaling.
Naturally the same function and shape can be
realized simplified but the outcome is very
ordinary. The shape of the screw gives the product
added value and it gets your imagination and
creativity going.
You are an inch tall in the land of giants, where
even the screws are almost your size."
The idea of having an oversized screw as a table
seems natural for a versatile man like Eero Aarnio
working on industrial design, furniture and
architecture.
Screws are used in every house but mostly hidden why not honor them as visible objects?
Place them as a side table in the living room and
on the veranda or the higher version in cafeterias,
coffee shops and bars.
The fibreglass and the metallic colors make them
a shining eye-catcher in every space.
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