Word: thonet
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Shapes can be freer in plastic. One designer actually refused to make straight-lined furniture in plastic because the material curves so readily and gracefully. This is radically different from wood, which requires very complicated processes before it will curve into a Thonet chair...
...Corbusier has made in this exhibition hall a beautiful space," Katayama explained. "Thonet chairs have grace and a flowing form of their own; I do not want to kill the spaces but relate them." To do just this Katayama has constructed, out of the left-over panels from the Bauhaus exhibition he designed last year, a series of boxes open on top and on one side. These compartments hold the forty-odd chairs in the show. He painted the panels white, painted one wall of the room red-orange, and closed off a wall of windows with black cloth...
Aside from the conscious and obvious deference Katayama shows to Le Corbusier's building, there are more subtle relationships between the two designers. Katayama's white panel boxes have no curves, only planes and right angles that are contraforms to set off the flows in Thonet's wood. One wonders if Katayama had in mind Le Corbusier's statement that "the right angle is the primordial sign of the ordering and organizing spirit." And just as Carpenter Center has no real front or back--its axis diagonal to Quincy Street and entrance buried in the middle--so too Katayama...
Nothing less than the total space is Katayama's concern here. He says that the table and chair where the guard sits, even the clock on that table are as much a part of his design as the conscious making of white space in the Thonet poster...
...Katayama felt the need to solve this seemingly peripheral problem, which is crucial in terms of total space. He placed modern reproductions of the chairs along a wall of the room. Sitting in one of these chairs, a visitor ends his tour with a feeling for the interaction of Thonet, Katayama, and Le Corbusier.TOSHIRO KATAYAMA, graphic designer for the Visual Arts Center, designed the three posters above and arranged the Thonet exhibit...