Chairs by Architects

Book excerpt: Revealing pairings of a chair and a building by each architect—featuring fifty-five stars from Calatrava to Hadid Does an architect’s style always come across, regardless of medium? Pairing great buildings with great chairs by the same architect, Chairs by Architects demonstrates how the defining qualities of a building’s style can also be evident in that architect’s furniture designs. Pieces of furniture, like manifestos, become signatures of architectural style. The fifty-five architects featured here include early modern architectural pioneers such as Otto Wagner, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Antoni Gaudí, and Walter Gropius, together with more recent modern masters such as Oscar Niemeyer, Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind. The book contains interviews on Designing (in conversation with David Adjaye), Manufacturing (with David E. Bright, Knoll, Inc.), Selling (with Zeev Aram), Collecting (with Richard Wright), and Preserving (with Susanne Graner, Vitra Design Museum). This is essential reading for everyone concerned with design, architecture, and the relationship between creators and their creations.