For the centennial of the founding of the Bauhaus, the MR Collection – which owes a great deal to the ideals of the artistic movement connected with the school – has been revised with new fabrics and leathers for the coverings.
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The MR Collection represents some of the earliest steel furniture designs by Mies van der Rohe. The material choice was inspired by fellow Bauhaus master Marcel Breuer, while the forms are thought to be modern derivatives of 19th century iron rocking chairs.
Structure: polished chrome finish tubular steel, with cushion support straps. The 242 model has a series of hooks behind the backrest for adjusting its height.
Straps: leather-covered structural straps in black, white beige and dark brown, to match the selected cushion upholstery.
Padding: removable cushions in foam, upholstered in leather or fabric.
Note: MR has been produced with a special stamp on the structure to mark the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus.
The collection is available in a wide range of leathers.
Collection includes standard and adjustable chaise lounges, chairs with arms and a stool.
Museum of Modern Art Award, 1977.
Design Centre Stuttgart Award, 1978 Design from the Mies van der Rohe Archive of the Museum of Modern Art.
Adjustable chaise longue is 65cm W x 179cm D x 68-90cm H.
Chaise longue is 62cm W x 120cm D x 95cm H.
MR armchair is 65cm W x 97cm D x 83cm H with a seat height of 44cm.
MR stool is 60cm W x 57cm D x 46cm H.
The origins of the bent-steel cantilevered chair are somewhat murky, but generally three names come up in the discussion. Marcel Breuer is widely credited with pioneering the exploration of the material, Mart Stam seems to be the first to conceive a “chair without back legs”, and Mies van der Rohe is remembered as the one who made it beautiful.
It is believed that Mart Stam described his idea—a continuous loop of steel (he used a thinner gauge gas pipe in the earliest versions) with a cantilevered seat—at a meeting of the Werkbund in 1926. In attendance were Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe, both of whom were inspired to design cantilever chairs of their own in the coming months. Mies replaced the right angles on the front legs with a graceful curve which had the advantage of increasing elasticity while preventing material fatigue. Mies first showed the MR 10 and MR20 at the Stuttgart Weissenhof Estate — a seminal Werkbund exhibition, which first brought modernist works to the public, with buildings designed by Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and others. Over the next five years, Mies would develop an entire series of tubular steel designs now presented by Knoll as the MR Collection.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began his career working in his father's stonemasonry business. After an apprenticeship with furniture designer Bruno Paul in Berlin, he joined the office of architect Peter Behrens, whose work presaged the modern movement. In 1912, Mies established his own office in Berlin, and later became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund and Director of the Bauhaus.
He immigrated to the United States in 1938, setting up a practice in Chicago. His buildings include the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona Exposition, the Tugendhat Villa in Brno, Czechoslovakia, the Seagram Building, designed with Philip Johnson, a cluster of residential towers along Chicago's Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, and the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, where he was the director of architecture. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 - 1969) Birthplace Germany