How Barber Osgerby Designed the Tip Ton Chair for Vitra

Planform Array V and Tip Ton chairs, Designers of the Year installation, Maison et Objet, Paris, 2013. Picture credit: Stéphane Muratet (page 95)

The following excerpt is based on a conversation with Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus of Vitra, and Eckart Maise, Vitra’s chief design officer.

[Barber Osgerby’s] ambition was to create a chair that would respond to the need for movement and allow for dynamic sitting. The criteria also specified that the Tip Ton would be made out of plastic, a sturdy, inexpensive material that could invigorate the school environment with color, while still being recyclable. The chair would also have minimal components, so as to not be affected by vibrations when moved around. Osgerby recalls that, at this point, they did not know, or even care, what the chair would look like: “It was a three-dimensional diagram, a maquette.”

Fehlbaum emphasizes that seating position is a challenge for chair design in general: the sitter needs to be able to lean forward for interaction with the table, or back, for relaxation. Most chairs only support one position. The introduction of the cantilever in the early twentieth century had offered chair designs the possibility of incorporating some movement, but not two distinct seating positions. A great example of this design feature can be seen in Marcel Breuer’s celebrated B64 Chair (1928): instead of having the typical four-leg support, the chair’s tubular-steel front legs are each bent back into an L and joined together at the rear, allowing the seat to flex gently.

This text was excerpted from the new book Barber Osgerby Projects (Phaidon, 2017) by Jana Scholze.

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