Kimono Chair is a concept for creating furniture out of a flat piece of material by Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka.
Created for Vitra Edition 2007, it was presented at the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhien, Germany, in June, during the Design Miami/Basel collectors' fair.
The lacerated fabric - similar to the plastic sleeves used to protect wine bottles - is draped over a steel frame.
Here is a statement from Yoshioka:
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In order to realise the experimental piece, I pondered a concept of a new chair, which would open out the future possibilities of design. The concept of the chair was transformation of simple flat material into a volume.
The process between the initial form and the finished product is nothing you can imagine or express in a drawing: it is just like magic.
As I have grown up reading Japanese manga comics, I might have been naturally influenced by the magical world of flash transformation and instant metamorphoses.
- Tokujin Yoshioka