Recently, a team of FRCH’ers joined 13 other local design firms to participate in Herman Miller & APG’s Good Design Challenge. Each team was presented with the iconic Eames molded plastic chair and asked, “What Inspires You?”
The only rules were that the base must remain attached to the chair. Any and all transformations were fair game and the end results were a little bit of everything.
After collaborative discussion and brainstorming, the FRCH team agreed that we wanted to celebrate the chair’s simple and beautiful form by leaving it un-touched.
We enclosed the chair in a plywood box and projected the Eames’s 1968 film Powers of Ten onto the molded plastic seat. Taking inspiration from the Eames’s sketches and fabric designs, dot patterns were painted on the interior of the box with fluorescent paint and illuminated with black lights. Visitors used 3D glasses to peer inside the box and discover the “Essence of Eames.”
The Essence of Eames:
Paying homage to Powers of Ten, the iconic film by Ray & Charles Eames, this chair design brings a new dimension to the ideas and philosophies that these influential designers pioneered four decades ago. Serving as a blank canvas, the chair itself is the medium upon which we explore themes of scale and relationship between the simple and complex, micro and macro. Utilizing modern 3D technology we bring this timeless video to life in a new way.
Check out the other inspired submissions:
Integration: Illustrating “the process of integrating strengths, creativity, and personality to produce strategic results.”
Re-Imagining Realities: What if the built environment relied upon the people & objects (like chairs) for support, instead of the other way around?
Do-Nothing Chair: Inspired by the solar-powered display designed for Alcoa Aluminum in 1957 by Charles Eames, titled the “Do-Nothing Machine.”
Mirror Miller on the Chair : Derived from Alexander Girard’s 1973 Millerstripe fabric, this is a nod to Donald Maharam’s pattern-focused inventiveness.
Envision: Imagine a place where mind and spirit are inspired…Visualize. Create. Sit.
Love Affair with Chair: The simplicity of Eames’s molded chair juxtaposed with the complexity of colors and patterns of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss.”
Purple Flower Power: Inspired by the color purple.
Rock/Roll: A tribute to late musician and humanitarian Adam Yauch. Made of repurposed artwork from CDs.
The Lava Chair: “Light up your space.”
The Stacks: Inspiration from everything!
What the Fold? : An effort to have fun with artistic expression through furniture, this is derived from classic childhood paper “cootie catchers.”
What If? An artistic collaboration with a 3rd grade class.
The Unnamed Chair: A chair on the go!
