milana

1995 - low chair - sawaya & moroni

Low armless lounge chair consisting of saddle leather webbing in black or natural colours.

Frame in brushed stainless steel flat iron.

 

“The Milana chair is a sort of extrapolation of a study for Knoll which was abandoned with a change of management. Knoll had asked me for an ultra high-end chair that would resonate, within their collections, with Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Chair. But it never saw the light of day. The first chair I drew for them was a sort of fat tongue in very tight black leather… They decided it didn’t square with the Mies reference. That’s how I arrived at this new lounge chair, which I initially wanted to call “Mies crossed”. The humour was a bit too cruel or direct. Which is why the new chair, based on those earlier studies, is a sort of perversion of the Barcelona. It’s as if Mies was trying to be welcoming and friendly. The twisted and slightly limp look of the basic structure is the opposite of the Barcelona. At the same time, in terms of the essential nature of a structure, it’s almost the same thing. It’s a bit of a game. Design allows you to play these games from time to time, on condition that they’re not reckless. In architecture, I think you can resort to humour when the situation is desperate, but it’s always more dangerous.”

Jean Nouvel

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