Designers reinterpret Ron Arad's Tom Vac chair
Clerkenwell Design Week 2014: in our second story today about Ron Arad, the London designer's Tom Vac chair has been reinterpreted by more than 20 design studios into forms including swings, speakers and a representation of an udder.
The Tailor My Tom Vac exhibition during Clerkenwell Design Week will include pieces by 23 architects and designers who have each put their spin on Ron Arad's chair to mark its 15th birthday.
"It's very interesting to see other people taking the same idea and expressing their responses," said Arad. "Inspiration comes from strange places sometimes, so it's good to know that Tom Vac is being used as a starting point as well as being an end product."
Each group started with the corrugated polypropylene seat and tubular steel legs of the Vitra-produced chair to create the one-off pieces.
Hawkins Brown has made a nod to TV show Baywatch by turning the seat into a lifeguard's chair, named Pamela after one of the show's best-known stars.
Two groups have turned the chair into a swing: HLW International has used a wooden frame, while Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan have suspended it from a metal structure and mechanism that turns a wooden board.
M Moser Associates added four upturned milk bottle forms to the seat, with white blobs dripping through the surface to look as if they are "feeding" four small versions of the chair positioned below.
Grey pool noodles have been squeezed through the hole in the plastic shell in the design by Emulsion Architecture.
Jump Studios and Millenium Models have used the seat to support a record player, Scott Brownrigg Ltd has moulded the curved form into a gramophone-shaped speaker for a smartphone dock and ID:SR has employed it to amplify the sound from a stereo.
Other contributors include Aecom, Morey Smith, Farrells, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris , El Ultimo Grito Studio and CJCT Studios.
Arad first designed the chair to stack 100 high for his Totem installation in Milan, commissioned by Italian magazine Domus in 1997. Vitra put the design into production two years later.
The designs will go on display at Vitra's London showroom, 30 Clerkenwell Road, tomorrow until 22 May for Clerkenwell Design Week. The showroom is also hosting the launch of the Dezeen Book of Interviews tomorrow evening.
