Olivares Aluminum Chair

Jonathan Olivares approached the initial product design phase for this outdoor chair with an objective, and not surprisingly taxonomic survey of the category: which ones were too heavy; which were too light; how comfortable were they; how were they produced; and of course, how were they to interact with, to sit with, to live with.

After a series of experiments with hydro-forming, stamping, and other means of manipulating metal, Olivares and team posed a hypothesis: what if we could cast this chair in a single piece of material — not only for ergonomic comfort, but to reduce cost and make the chair as thin as feasible. Ultimately it was the aluminum supplier that suggested this might work.

The final chair is composed of a die-cast aluminum body-contoured shell and extruded aluminum legs; plastic connections tie the pieces together and allow the chairs to stack neatly without scratching. The entire form is powder coated with a durable matte finish.

The chair’s shape evolved in order to maximize structure and hit the sweet spot in terms of weight. Olivares’s team continuously measured against the Bertoia side chair (15 lbs.) until shavings here, adjustments there yielded the perfect weight: the final product is just under 15 lbs. Read More


 

Jonathan Olivares was born in Boston in 1981 and graduated from Pratt Institute. One of his earliest projects, after founding his design practice in Los Angeles. was a survey of the U.S. furniture industry written for Domus. That assignment connected Olivares directly to Knoll, and soon after the company commissioned him to conduct a two-year research project on the history of the office chair. Olivares’ A Taxonomy of Office Chairs, which was published in 2011, is the culmination of that research. In 2012, Olivares again partnered with Knoll, introducing the Olivares Aluminum Chair, which received the GOOD Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum.

His projects include a flagship showroom for Kvadrat (New York City, 2022), a retail shop for Camper (Rockefeller Center, 2019), a collaboration with Johnston Marklee on furniture for Dropbox Headquarters (San Francisco, 2019), the installations Brujas Training Facility (Performance Space New York, 2018), and a showroom and two exhibitions designed collaboratively with Pernilla Ohrstedt for Vitra (Weil am Rhein, 2015, and Cologne 2016 and 2018). In 2018, Selected Works, a monograph about Olivares’ work, was released by powerHouse Books.

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Photograph: Yoo Jean Han