70 Susan chair at Norwegian Prototypes exhibition
Alex Hellum is pleased to announce his participation in the Norwegian Prototypes exhibition at the East Gallery, 214 Brick Lane, E1 6SA, during the London Design Festival 2009.
Alex is showing for the first time a new chair called “70 Susan”.
70 Susan image 1
70 Susan image 2
The chair was originally designed by Alex for his mothers 70th Birthday in May 2009. Here is what Alex says about the chair:
“My mother has always complained about the discomfort of so much furniture due to proportional differences and ergonomic considerations. We always thought she was the problem, but in retrospect she might be right. The project then took on a different dimension when I realised that an opportunity presented itself to develop a kitchen chair with some new ergonomic considerations. Maybe the average dimensions of a kitchen chair needed to be revisited?
The seat is basically wider than traditional chairs, and the backrest is as high as your shoulder blades, giving the same comfort you get when sitting with your back against the wall. This meant the backrest could be straight. The rest of the chair was routered out of birch plywood, and the seat is cold bent and glued into the curve at the back. The challenge was to create a piece that didn’t need any pre-forming or other complicated processes, and that was energy efficient through the production process. The design is put together with glue and screws to keep the simplicity and honesty continuous without any traditional furniture junctions. Due to the way it is machined and put together, it could in theory be made in the shed at home, carried across the lawn and into the house with no further need for transport.”
Here are some further details about the exhibition from their official press release.
Norwegian Prototypes
London
21 – 27th of September 2009
London Design Festival
The brightest stars of new Norwegian furniture design exhibit their work together for the very first time during London Design Festival 2009.
An exhibition of collected work, prototypes and experiments from selected norwegian furniture designers. The work exhibited challenges conventional and traditional norwegian furniture design which has typically been charactirised by it’s clean lines, functionality and mass production.
A prototype is often used as part of the design process to allow designers to explore design alternatives, test ideas and visualise a full scale model. Using their experience the designer then tailors the prototype according to the specific unknowns still present in the intended design.
With this exhibition we hope to show the diversity and variations of the different stages of their work and prototypes. Some of the work will be in it’s initial stage, as an experiment or mock up, whilst other objects will be more finished, fully functional pieces.
The pieces will be accompanied by drawings, sketches and photos of the development process for each piece and will be displayed in the gallery. This will be a unique opportunity to observe the different approaches to developing ideas and designing.
Exploring the progress of a designer’s development, where work starts and where it ends, its destination, the furniture shown will be a beautiful, functional and raw collection of work. This award winning group of designers are some of the brightest stars of new Norwegian design and this will be the first show of its kind.
For all enquires contact:
Kim Thome
E. info@kimthome.com
T. + 44 (0)7709 573 763
Amy Hunting
E. hello@amyhunting.com
T. +44 (0)7501 821 218
70 Susan high resolution image 1
70 Susan high resolution image 2
