Of all the ways to make use of a chair, sticking one’s bum on it can’t be the most imaginative possibility. Surely we can do better? I’ve raced them down the corridors of work on a Friday afternoon, and I’ve hidden behind them during the scariest bits of Game of Thrones, but now some real creative talents have put their minds to releasing the potential of the chair to mark the 15th anniversary of Ron Arad’s Tom Vac design.
Vitra invited 20 architecture and design studios to re-interpret Arad’s classic chair and put the results together in a show called Tailor My Tom Vac at the recent Clerkenwell Design Week 2014 in London. With a pretty open brief in terms of materials and function, what did the chosen few come up with? While some studios concentrated on making the chair the best it could be, others took the basic shape in very different directions. Chopped down and used as a go-kart seat, re-purposed as an anti-scratch collar for a sculptural wooden dog, and even turned into some sort of creature from the deep, reeled in by a gnome. Madness.
Tom Vac by Coffey Architects
Tom Vac by Morag Myerscough
Tom Vac by ID:SR
Tom Vac by Jump Studios
Tom Vac by Woods Bagot
Tom Vac by BDP
Tom Vac by El Ultimo Grito Studio
Tom Vac by CJCT Studios
Tom Vac by Hawkins Brown
