event news eero aarnio retrospective in helsinki, finland · aarnio is known for his sculptural...

Exhibition at the Kunsthalle Helsinki, June 12 - August 10, 2003

The Kunsthalle Helsinki recently held an extensive exhibition showcasing the wide-ranging work of Finnish designer Eero Aarnio (b. 1932).

With their bold colours and Pop-inspired forms, Aarnio's Ball, Pastil and Bubble chairs captured the imagination of the trendy design set of the 1960s, a time when plastic revolutionised both furniture and interior design. Aarnio's designs have retained their appeal as firm favourites of the fashion world and pop culture, recently achieving new heights of popularity thanks to the current retro boom.

Featured exhibits included famous icons of contemporary design, all-purpose seating, public furniture and a selection of original drafts spanning four decades.

Photo taken of the ASKO exhibition stand at the Koln fair in 1968 - featuring BALL chairs, Cognac chairs and the Kantarelli table

Visitors were invited to see and try out the quintessential Finnish sitting experience of today and yesterday in the lap of Aarnio's classic chairs.

Eero Aarnio is one of Finland's most internationally acclaimed designers. His most famous works date from the 1960s, an era characterised by the arrival of new technology, rapid economic growth and the birth of the Finnish welfare state.

In the wake of post-war urbanisation and economic restructuring, Finnish society witnessed far-reaching changes, with consumer goods coming to occupy a more and more focal role in everyday life.

Furniture and interior design proliferated in a new range of free, playful and futuristic shapes and colours.

Aarnio is known for his sculptural fibreglass furniture, his use of vibrantly coloured plastic, innovative geometrical forms and sound grasp of ergonomics.

In addition to world-renowned classics, his key worksinclude lesser-known all-purpose chairs including the Polaris, UPO-022 and UPO-023, all widely used in venues ranging from theatres and assembly halls to schools and ice hockey stadiums. The office and public furniture Aarnio designed for Martela, Asko and EFG forms a major part of his oeuvre, which also extends to interiors, exhibitions, door handles and other smaller items.

Nearly forty years of Finnish cultural history are encapsulated in Aarnio's designs, especially in his famous Ball Chair. A telephone by Ericsson was installed in the first prototype in the 1960s; today, the Ball Chair is being fitted for broadband !

31EERO AARNIO RETROSPECTIVE IN HELSINKI, FINLAND event news

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Eero photo taken for the Stendig catalogue in 1973

Taken in his design studio at home in Helsinki in 1967

Photo taken at Eero's home in Helsinki 2002

Eero Aarnio was born in 1932 in Finland, where he still lives today. One of the pioneers of plastic furniture design, he graduated from the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki in 1957 and opened an interior and industrial design office in 1962.

Inspired by new materials and free from the restraints of more conventional materials, Aarnio used plastic to realize innovative forms. Initially, Aarnio's designs were hand crafted out of natural materials. Of note from this era was the wicker stool which he later translated into fiberglass, named the Mushroom stool. In the 1960s, he began experimenting with fiberglass.

Mushroom rattan 1960Ball Chair (Globe Chair) 1966 Tableware, scoop, bottle opener, ashtray 1966Cognac Chair (V.S.O.P.) and Kanttarelli Tables 1966 Pastil Chair (Pastilli, Gyro) 1967 Bubble Chair (Bing Bong) 1968 Serpentine Sofa 1968 Imperial Armchair, Sofa and Table 1970Tomato Chair 1971 White fibreglass chair with armrests 1972 (prototype) Red fiberglass chair U-022 Chair U-023, 1972Pony (Mustang) 1973 'Avec' Chair 1979 Plywood Chair with chromed legs 1986 (prototype) Copacabana Table 1991Screw Tables 1992 Cacadu Armchair 1993 (prototype) Delfin Armchair 1994 Parabel Table 1994 Puzzle Chair 1994 (prototype) Triangle Chair 1994 (prototype) Furniture handles 1996 for Valli & Valli (Italy) Formula Chair 1998Mushroom production in fibreglass 1998 Vitra miniature Ball Chair 2000 Parabel Dining Table 2002Focus Chair 2002Tipi 2002



Ball Chair - 1966

A Ball Chair is a "room within a room" with a cozy and calm athmosphere, protecting outside noises and giving a private space for relaxing or having a phonecall. Turning around its own axis on the base the view to the outer space is variable for the user and thus he is not completely excluded from world outside.

"It is something between a piece of furniture and a piece of architecture and at the same time embodies both the mobile and the established, the fixed."

"The idea of the chair was very obvious. We had moved to our first home and I had started my free-lance career in 1962. We had a home but no proper big chair, so I decided to make one, but some way a really new one.

After some drawing I noticed that the shape of the chair had become so simple that it was merely a ball. I pinned the full scale drawing on the wall and sat in the chair to see how my head would move when sitting inside it.

Being the taller one of us I sat in the chair and my wife drew the course of my head on the wall. This is how I determined the height of the chair. Since I aimed at a ball shape, the other lines were easy to draw, just remembering that the chair would have to fit through a doorway.

After this I made the first prototype myself using an inside mould, which has been made using thesame principle as a glider fuselage or wing.

I covered the plywood body mould with wet paper and laminated the surface with fiberglass, rubbed down the outside, removed the mould from inside, had it upholstered and added the leg.

In the end I installed the red telephone on the inside wall of the chair. The naming part of the chair was easy, the BALL CHAIR was born." The result was great. It was the birth of one of the most remarkable chairs in the furniture history of the 20th century.

This first hand made Ball Chair is still standing in Eero's house. It was this first Ball Chair two young managers from the company Asko discovered when visiting Eero to see some pine wood designs. They were immediatly impressed and convinced of the phenomenal design.

It took a few years to get the Ball Chair into production. In 1966 the Ball Chair was presented at the international furniture fair in Cologne. It was the sensation of the fair, the international breakthrough for Eero Aarnio and the start for a whole line of fibreglass designs by Aarnio.



Pastil Chair by Eero Aarnio 1967

One year after he had designed the Pastil Chair in 1968 Eero Aarnio received the American Industrial Award for this chair. The New York Times wrote about the Ball Chair and Pastil Chair at this time: "the most comfortable forms to hold up the human body"

"The Pastil shape can be looked at from many angles. i.e. the product shape comes from a small sweetie, pastil, but in this case the idea was, that a lot of empty, cushioned space is sent to the other side of the world inside the Ball Chair. .

Eero out on his holiday house lake - fishing from apastil chair

"Assume a Round Chair" book cover by Eero Aarnio,2003

A new round chair would fit in this space, and so the diameter of the Pastil is the same as the opening of the Ball Chair

I made the first prototype out of polystyrene which helped me to verify the measurements, ergonomics and rocking ability

Because fibreglass is always laminated by hand on a smooth mould the visible surface is perfectly shiny but the other surface slightly rough. I have always wanted to cover or to hide this side of my fibreglass products.

In the Pastil it is ideally on the inside and thus totally invisible."

It is amazing how comfortable one can sit a in such a shiny, oversized "sweetie" slightly turning and rocking side-, back- and forwards.

The material - fibreglass - allows to keep the Pastil Chair outdoors throughout the year. In summer it is big fun to sit in the Pastil Chair floating on water, in winter gliding down a small hill with tremendous speed.

The pastil chair was designed to utilise the void within the hollow mass of the Ball chair



Bubble Chair - 1968

Based on the idea of the Ball Chair the Bubble Chair is a reduction of this design.

Originally called the "BING BONG" chair by ASKO. It was later changed to "BUBBLE"by Charles Stendig ( american importer )

As Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said: Less is more! A masterpiece of reduction.

Aarnio about Bubble Chair:

"After I had made the Ball Chair I wantedto have the light inside it and so I had the idea of a transparent ball where light comes from all directions.

The only suitable material is acrylic which is heated and blown into shape like a soap bubble.

Since I knew that the dome-shaped skylights are made in this way I contactedthe manufacturer and asked if it would be technically possible to blow a bubble that isbigger than a hemisphere. The answer was Yes.

I had a steel ring made, the bubble was blownand cushions were added and the chair was ready. And again the name was obvious: BUBBLE."

'There is no nice way to make a clear pedestal' Eero Aarnio notes. That is the lucky reason why the Bubble Chair hangs from the ceiling.

Like the Ball Chair the Bubble Chair alsoimpresses the user by the special accoustic. The Bubble Chair swallows the sounds and you feel isolated inside in a pleasant way, even when you are in a crowded place.

At the EXPO 2000 in Hannover eleven Bubble Chairs were installed in the Cycle Bowl "Blue Box" of the Grüne Punkt Deutschland Pavillion as small, individual information spaces whithin the library.

The Norwegean phonecompany Telenor has installed some Bubble Chairs in the entrancehall of their new building in Oslo to offer calm "rooms" for mobile phoning.

The transparent chair is used in music videos, advertising and fashion magazines.

"VERTIGO" CD music cover for Groove Armada

Eero Aarnio's grand-daughters at play

EXPO 2000 Hannover - Cycle Bowl - Blue Box

Donnatella Versace in a bubble chair on the water Book Cover by Taschen



Tomato Chair - 1971

Aarnio about Tomato Chair:

"A product idea can come about in many different ways and here is one of them.

I realized that Pastil Chair floats and carries the person who sits in it in water, but it is very rickety.

If there were three items like two great armrests and the back of the chair it would be more stable, and this is how the idea of the TOMATO Chair was born.

The name reflects its looks: looking at the chair from the front there are two round shapes i.e. two circles like in the wordtOmatO."

The Tomato Chair visualizes how Aarnio plays with round shapes. At the first sight the Tomato Chair looks complicated, but the second look shows an intelligent combination of 3 circles with same diameter, two of them being armrests, one stretched to a comfortable back, and even a fourth half circle up side down giving the chair a consequent seat.

When looking at the Tomato Chair from different angles it is more than a chair, it is a sculpture.



PONY - re-edition of the 1973 Mustang

New moulds for the foam parts had be to made and a new suitable fabric had to be woven. A lot of small details had to be worked over just like in developing a completely new model.

The strech fabric is produced by a weavery doing fabrics for car, train and airplane seats.

Children are attracted by the bright colors and the uncoventional forms of Eero Aarnio's designs and especially the Pony looks like an overdimensional toy. But it is not the toy Eero Aarnio has intended to create with the Pony. The dimensions are conformed to adult's size. The Pony shows the play of fantasy which is so characteristic for Eero Aarnio and in acomportable seat it might carry you to unknown fields of your own imagination.

Aarnio: "A chair is a chair, is a chair, is a chair ... but a seat does not necessarily have to be a chair. It can be anything as it is ergonomically correct.

A seat could even be a small and soft Pony on which you can ride or sit sideways. The Pony has a moulded foam body, feet and ears which are connected by a tube frame and all parts are upholstered with stretch fabric



Screw Tables - 1992

Aarnio: "I have always studied my surroundings, the nature, buildings, objects, out of scale, in whichcase big can be small and visa versa.

With this in mind a small metal screw serves the function of a table: a spiral part is a thin table leg and the head is the broadening table top. It is only a question of scaling.

Naturally the same function and shape can be realized simplified but the outcome is very ordinary. The shape of the screw gives the product added value and it gets your imagination and creativity going.

You are an inch tall in the land of giants, where even the screws are almost your size."

The idea of having an oversized screw as a table seems natural for a versatile man like Eero Aarnio working on industrial design, furniture and architecture.

Screws are used in every house but mostly hidden -why not honor them as visible objects?

Place them as a side table in the living room and on the veranda or the higher version in cafeterias, coffee shops and bars.

The fibreglass and the metallic colors make them a shining eye-catcher in every space.


event news eero aarnio retrospective in helsinki, finland · aarnio is known for his sculptural...

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