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Frank O. Gehry & Associates

Bentwood Furniture

"I've always been interested in furniture, probably because my dad had a little furniture company in Toronto for a while. Architecture takes so long to make, which is exactly why furniture is always so interesting to me - it's instant gratification. My experience as an architect selecting furniture for a client has been very disappointing. You go into the market and always find the same thing; a Mies chair. It's especially difficult for low- budget projects. I would always end up designing furniture.

All of the bentwood furniture to this point - Thonet's - Aalto's. Eames' - always had a heavy substructure and then webbing, or an intermediary structure, for the seat. The difference in my chairs is that the support structure and the seat are formed of the same lightweight slender wood strips, which serve both functions. The material forms a single and continuous idea. What makes this all work and gives it extraordinary strength is the interwoven, basket like character of the design. Now structure and material have freed bentwood furniture from its former heaviness and rigidity. It really is possible to make bentwood furniture that is pliable, springy and light."

Frank O. Gehry

Inspired by the qualities of the bushel baskets on which he had played as a child in Toronto, Gehry had been thinking for almost a decade prior to the creation of his Knoll furniture pieces about making lightweight wood furniture. Early sketches illustrate his concept of organically weaving the material together to overcome the artificiaal separation of the support structure and the seat that had characterized much laminated furniture.

These ideas, based on the belief that the lighter a piece is, the easier it is to make, and that by cutting it to its essence, the structure is at its ultimate, failed to find the support of furniture manufacturers. Without a means to verify his concept in full-scale, these ideas went nowhere until the spring of 1989, when Knoll visited Gehry to discuss the creation of a new line of furniture.

In the fall of 1989, Knoll opened a workshop next door to Gehry's studio, affording him the kind of hands-on, day-to-day involvement he wanted with the project. A few months into the project, Gehry discovered that by laminating thin strips of maple veneer and weaving them like a basket, he was able to create continuous structures that integrated the chair's seat, back and frame. One hundred twenty prototypes were produced over the next two years, culminating in the development of the Hat Trick, High Sticking, Cross Check, Power Play, Icing and Offside chairs and the Face Off table, all of which were introduced to the public during the spring of 1992.