The Single-Piece Chair. Approaches to a Design Concept from Rietveld to the Present Day

Abstract

It is striking how little research has been done into the theoretical bearings of furniture design. Overviews of modern chair design often remain descriptive, and hardly any effort is made to uncover the underlying intentions and design principles of furniture designs, let alone to compare them. The same is true for specific design concepts like that of a single-piece chair. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate how the concept of a single-piece chair was approached over time, by exploring the single-piece chairs designed by Rietveld – as a pioneer – and those created by later furniture designers, and to which extent these designs were successful. In the first chapter, attention will be given to the positioning of Rietveld’s single-piece chairs in his oeuvre, after which a material analysis of Rietveld’s single-piece chairs will give rise to an analysis of his underlying design principles. The second chapter of this thesis concerns the single-piece chairs that were made by other designers after Rietveld’s first experiments with this concept. The emphasis will be placed on chairs that are mass-produced, since this was one of Rietveld’s aims. A more general description of the development of the single-piece chair leads to a discussion on single-piece chairs that were made in the spirit of Rietveld’s designs, after which an epilogue will present a bridge between groups of chairs with different underlying intentions.