Jonathan Olivares admits he is obsessed with the Newtonian idea of standing on the shoulders of giants. In this case, the giants happen to be outdoor chairs, and are mostly made of metal—Harry Bertoia’s wire frame Side Chair (1958), for one, and Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper’s Lambda Chair (1959), another.
The portfolio of his Los Angeles-based office, Jonathan Olivares Design Research (JODR), boasts a multitude of projects for both manufacturers and institutions. Olivares cultivates a diverse working environment, collaborating with a set of curious and multi-disciplinarian contributors who are as comfortable with computer modelling as they are with synthesizing insights—whether observed, mocked-up, or researched. And for Olivares, the research-driven side of his office is essential to his entire operation. Knoll first got to know the young designer in the context of a survey he was putting together for Domus Magazine on the state of the American furniture industry in 2007. Since then, he’s become adept at distilling and articulating complex quantities of information, skills that inevitably inform both parts of his practice.
A Taxonomy of Office Chairs (left), published by Phaidon in 2011, was meticulously compiled by Los Angeles-based designer and researcher Jonathan Olivares (right).
Before being asked to design an outdoor chair for Knoll, Olivares was commissioned by Knoll to author A Taxonomy of Office Chairs, a project printed in 2011 by Phaidon Press that presents a headfirst dive into the evolution, aesthetics, and functionality of task seating.
“It got to the point where I could say that a really great chair would take about two minutes to illustrate.”
—Jonathan Olivares
A spread from A Taxonomy of Office Chairs, published by Phaidon in 2011. Image courtesy of Jonathan Olivares.
Unsurprisingly, then, the designer approached the initial phase of collaboration with a taxonomic survey of classic outdoor chairs and their attendant properties—which ones were in fact too heavy; which were too light; how comfortable they were; how they were produced; and then of course, how they were to interact with, to sit with, to live with.
One unexpected result of his countless hours of research was the discovery of a simple metric with which Olivares could quickly judge the efficacy of a design: “It got to the point where I could say that a really great chair would take about two minutes to illustrate," he told Knoll, "whereas if it took too much less, the chair was too simple, and if it took three, four, or five minutes, the chair was too complicated."
From Typology to Prototype
The Olivares Chair is born. Image from the Knoll Archive.
Supported by an experienced team of furniture and engineering experts at Knoll, Olivares embarked on an ambitious quest to create an outdoor chair that was just right: not too heavy, not too light, more comfortable than anything else, and smart enough to also make its way inside. The result—a deft convergence of material, technical craft, form, and color—is so comfortable, durable, and handsome in its simplicity that its presence might even melt away. The Olivares Aluminum Chair exists as comfortably in its environment as its sitter does upon it.
A fastidiously ordered grid of photographs made communicating potential adjustments and their cascading effects easier for Olivares and Knoll design director Benjamin Pardo. Image from the Knoll Archive.
Before arriving at this outcome, Olivares and team went through a series of experiments with hydro-forming, stamping, and other means of metal manipulation. A divergence in the design process briefly had them playing with the idea of a plastic outdoor chair before returning to their original convictions. But the technical possibilities of metalwork presented a road block, forcing Olivares to pose a hypothesis: what if they could cast the chair in a single piece of material—not only for ergonomic comfort, but to reduce the cost and make chair as thin as feasibly possible? The designer recounted: "In an almost sarcastic comment, I said, well, can't we just mold the whole thing in one piece? And the engineer said, well, yeah. We can."
Ultimately, it was the aluminum supplier Leggett & Platt who confirmed that it would be possible to create an entirely dye-cast aluminum chair as a continuous ergonomic seating surface, the first of its kind. For Olivares' chair, as for the chairs of the giants who came before him, material drove the project and functionality quickly followed. A series of models and prototypes later, the vocabulary was set.
Olivares' enthusiasm for material manipulation situates him as the latest in a series of Knoll designers who pushed the boundaries of material. Pictured: the wire mesh innovations of Harry Bertoia (left) and the bentwood furniture of Knoll design and development director Bill Stephens (right). Images from the Knoll Archive.
Worth Its Weight
For Olivares, access to fabricators and near-instant protyping were part of an invaluable process of getting to know the materials: “Can you surprise yourself with learning something new—or something that can be measured to be more successful?" he asked, recalling the design process. "Through experimentation you can push materials beyond their conventional limits.”
“The chair looks soft, despite its metallic nature.”
—Alexandra Lange
A section of the chair, demonstrating its wafer-thin composition. Image courtesy of Jonathan Olivares.
At its thinnest, the Olivares Aluminum Chair is three millimeters thick; at its widest, nearly three times that. This keeps the edges from being too sharp, but also allows the aluminum to do its job: stay cool. In fact, the thinness of the center of the chair lets the material adjust quickly to your body temperature; the outside edges in turn help to continuously temper that warming center.
"The final shape looks a bit like that of a proscenium arch, broad and inviting," wrote critic Alexandra Lange in a profile for Domus magazine. "The upper edge curves well back to provide a handhold. The chair looks soft, despite its metallic nature."
Prototypes of Olivares Aluminum Chair. Images from the Knoll Archive.
The chair’s shape evolved in order to maximize structure and hit the sweet spot in terms of weight. Olivares’s team continuously measured against the Bertoia Side Chair—which weighs about 15 lbs—until shavings here, adjustments there, yielded the perfect weight. The final iteration is just under 15 lbs. Computer modeling systems allowed his team to virtually “weigh” the chair throughout the design process, making sure it never strayed from the target.
“Can you surprise yourself with learning something new—or something that can be measured to be more successful?”
—Jonathan Olivares
Section diagrams of the Olivares Aluminum Chair were used to determine its structural potential. Image courtesy of Jonathan Olivares.
Structural and ergonomic tests, and a cache of scale models and printed prototypes are now relics of a nearly four-year-long process toward the final product. Aligning with his parallel goal to update the craft of making furniture in some way, the Olivares Aluminum Chair profits from the present moment, taking advantage of the possibilities afforded by experimental techniques in aluminum casting. Throughout, decisions were made and paths followed in order to optimize the overlap between designer, manufacturer, and customer needs. The result betrays Olivares’s earnest ambition to create a product “worth its weight on the planet.”
Stacked
Left: 1980s nylon skateboard rails. Image courtesy of Jonathan Olivares. Right: 3-D printed models of the Aluminum Chair's rear leg joint. Image from the Knoll Archive.
But the ultimate success of a piece of outdoor furniture can sometimes come from a crucial but oft-unnoticed consideration: its ability to stack. While developing the form of the individual object, the designer must simultaneously test it in the plural—can the chair be easily compressed and stored when not in use? "The rear leg joint is the most challenging structural, functional and visual intersection of elements in any stacking chair," Olivares noted.
“The rear leg joint is the most challenging structural, functional and visual intersection of elements in any stacking chair.”
—Jonathan Olivares
The plastic rail allows the chair to neatly stack one atop the other, without scuffing the seat below. Image from the Knoll Archive.
With the Olivares Aluminum Chair, the final design is comprised of a die-cast aluminum body-contoured shell and extruded aluminum legs, but it is the additional plastic connections that grant the chair its “stackability.” The designer was inspired by 1980s skateboard rails constructed of milled nylon that were used to protect the graphics on the undersides of skateboards while allowing them to slide smoothly on outdoor surfaces. The stacking rails on the Olivares Aluminum Chair, themselves only 5 millimeters in thickness, similarly maintain its slim profile while allowing the chairs to stack without scuffing the seats below.
Embracing Artificial
And after the question of form comes that of the color. “We developed the color with Benjamin Pardo—he was totally instrumental in developing the palette," Olivares reflected. "We were looking at David Hockney paintings and wondering, what are good outdoor colors? What are good artificial outdoor colors? We were drawn in by the paintings’ acceptance of artificiality. A die cast aluminum and powder coated chair is an artificial object. We wanted to be very clear that it was inspired by nature but manmade.”
Pardo also cited Italian futurist painting as another starting point, especially those inspired by the summer and the spring, like the works of Ennio Morlotti.
“Inside relates to manmade objects. Outside relates to a tree or to a flower.”
—Benjamin Pardo
The final colorway for the Olivares Aluminum Chair. Image from the Knoll Archive.
Both were content with the final colorway: a lively palette of bright, electric hues for outdoor use and a sober selection for interior spaces. "Inside relates to manmade objects," Pardo told Domus, referring to the grey. "Outside relates to a tree or to a flower." With plum, yellow, lime, orange, blue, sky blue, grey and white, there’s something for everyone, and every space.
Drainage hole on the Olivares Aluminum Chair. Image from the Knoll Archive.
“If you design something that’s good enough to work outdoors, you can always bring it back inside.”
—Jonathan Olivares
And finally, there is the hole. As Olivares put it, it does its job—an outdoor chair needs to drain. But the hole also gives some relief to the big surface of the chair, he explained. Plus, you get a chance to see exactly how thin it is. The designer noted the serendipity of a perfectly timed release, with the introduction of the chair coinciding with his move from Boston to Los Angeles—a city where outdoor furniture isn't only relevant for a couple of months.
And although the chair was designed with outdoor use in mind, this wasn't meant to preclude its use in indoor spaces. In a cafe setting, where the ubiquity of chairs calls immediate attention to their design and suitedness to a space, the Olivares Aluminum Chair can bring its "approachable" personality to any interior environment. After all, as Olivares pointed out, “If you design something that’s good enough to work outdoors, you can always bring it back inside.”
