For most of the early 1960s, Verner Panton drove around Europe trying to persuade someone to manufacture a chair. Fifteen manufacturers turned him down. One well-known American designer said the thing shouldn’t even be called a chair.

Today it’s in MoMA, the V&A and the Stedelijk, and it sits in Denmark’s official canon of national culture.

A bricklayer’s apprentice from a village on the island of Funen became the designer who tried to abolish the corner of the room, and spent
eleven years getting one chair made.

Verner Panton (1926–1998) spent forty years inside one of the most admired design cultures on earth, and forty years pushing hard in the opposite direction. Where Danish modernism had pale wood and restraint, he had plastic, foam, steel wire and saturated red. He built rooms where floor, wall and ceiling were the same colour and very nearly the same surface. He thought a room’s effect on you was a functional requirement, like whether a chair takes your weight.

He also thought there should be a tax on white paint.

Ways to support our channel:
Patreon: https://patreon.com/designdocs
Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/DesignDocs

Other things:
Instagram: @bctld
Portfolio: SingleSpeed.us

Accéder à la chaine Youtube