Output details

Two Examples of User Interface Furniture Design

This output contains 2 essays across 2 publications, which collectively explore different theories of user interface in furniture design. ‘Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec: Interface’, written for the Bouroullec’s retrospective at the Pompidou-Metz, interprets key furniture designs by the Bouroullec’s through Gui Bonsiepe’s theory of user interface developed in his book ‘Interface: An Approach to Design’ (1999). In the essay I argue that rather than designing for appearances, the Bouroullec’s design specifically with the user in mind. The Bouroullec’s achieve this, I explain, by both sculpting their designs around the contours of the user and building into their designs a high degree of openness, which allows the user a greater degree of flexibility. Based on observation of the designers in their workshop in Paris, the essay describes how the Bouroullecs develop several different prototypes for their designs. My essay on Judd, ‘It’s Hard to Find a Good Theory of Furniture’ provides a more historic analysis of the subject by examining the transformation of the beholder into a user in Judd’s furniture designs of the 1980s and 1990s. Research for the essay included conducting an interview with Judd’s main assistant Dudley Del Baso in Marfa, Texas, on the design and fabrication process of his furniture during this period. With details about Judd’s design and fabrication process established, the essay then proceeds to unpick Judd’s theory of furniture design as developed in his essay ‘It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp’ (1993), finally examining its relationship to both the furniture designs and the writings of Charles and Ray Eames. Ideas developed in the Judd essay were debated at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, (October 26, 2010), in a roundtable conversation with Martin Boyce and Ryan Gander on the occasion of the opening of the Judd exhibition.