VitraWiggle Side ChairInformationProducts of the familyDesigner Wiggle Side ChairFrank Gehry, 1972The architect Frank O. Gehry is known for his use of unusual materials. With his furniture series 'Easy Edges', he succeeded in bringing a new aesthetic dimension to such an everyday material as cardboard. The sculptural form of the Wiggle Side Chair makes it stand out. Although surprisingly simple in appearance, it is constructed with the consummate skill of an architect, making it not only very comfortable but also durable and robust.2)Material: corrugated cardboard, edges made of natural-look hardboard. Design: 1972Production: 1972Manufacturer: Easy Edges, Inc., New YorkSize: 85 x 42.5 x 60; seat height 45.5 cmsMaterial: corrugated cardboard, fiberboard,round timberCardboard furniture came on the scene during the sixties as a cheap and light alternative to traditional furniture. At that time attempts were made to reinforce the support of the single-layer cardboard offered by using folds, tabs, slots, and other devices.
Nevertheless, cardboard was not able to compete against plastic, which was just as light. Frank O. Gehry discovered a process that ensured cardboard furniture-making a new burst of popularity. “One day I saw a pile of corrugated cardboard outside of my office – the material which I prefer for building architecture models – and I began to play with it, to glue it together and to cut it into shapes with a hand saw and a pocket knife.”1 It was thus possible to transform massive blocks of cardboard into cardboard sculptures. Gehry named this material Edge Board: it consisted of glued layers of corrugated cardboard running in alternating directions, and in 1972 he introduced a series of cardboard furniture under the name “Easy Edges.” The “Easy Edges” were extraordinarily sturdy, and due to their surface quality, had a noise-reducing effect in a room. The design theorist Victor Papanek, one of the first to address the ecological responsibility of designers, praised Edge Board as a useful application of a packing material to furniture.
The “Easy Edges” were a great success and brought Gehry overnight fame as a furniture designer, but at the same time he was into a role he did not like. Even sales prices were no longer consistent with Gehry’s basic idea of offering furniture to suit anyone’s pocketbook. “ I started to feel threatened. I closed myself off for weeks at a time in a room to rethink my life. I decided that I was an architect, not a furniture designer … and I simply stopped doing it.”2 Gehry made an international breakthrough as an architect in the late seventies, among other things with the design of his private residence in Santa Monica, California, in 1978. Since 1986 Vitra AG has reproduced four models of his “Easy Edges.” [1] Frank O. Gehry, quoted in Marilyn Hoffmann, “Liberated Design,” The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, April 19, 1972.[2] Frank O.Gehry, quoted in Frank Gehry and his Architecture, exhibitioncatalogue (Walker Art Center, 1989), 64Designer:Frank GehryWith magnificent buildings such as the Guggenheim Bilbao
, Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the new Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Frank Gehry (b. 1929) has changed the nature and spirit of contemporary architecture. Yet the world’s best-known living architect has also enjoyed a prolific career as a designer of artful and functional objects, ranging from furniture to jewelry, that even at smaller scale are as lively and captivating as his architectural designs. Gehry was born in Toronto and moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. He received a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954 and—after several years of casting about that included a stint in the U.S. Army and studies at Harvard — Gehry opened his architectural practice in L.A. in 1962. Idiosyncratic renovations to his small, traditional house in Santa Monica — such as cladding portions of the exterior in chain-link fencing and corrugated metal — drew attention to Gehry in architectural circles. Corporate and institutional commissions added to his reputation, culminating in the global acclaim that greeted the opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao in 1997.
But the combination of visual dynamism and structural integrity expressed by that building had been evident for decades in Gehry’s designs. In 1972 he introduced a much-admired line of furniture he called Easy Edges. The curves and flowing lines of the pieces seem antithetical to the material are made from: cardboard—a presumably flimsy material that, when stacked, laminated and folded, is actually extraordinarily sturdy. Many of Gehry’s designs feature an abstracted fish motif. For the architect, it is a symbol of vitality, strength and flexibility. The fish appears in a group of 1982 plastic lamps created for Formica (and exhibited by The Jewish Museum in New York in 2010). Gehry used the motif in crystal goblets for Swid Powell (1990), his Pito kettle for Alessi (1992) and as earrings for a 2006 jewelry collection for Tiffany that also includes torqued rings, necklaces and bangles. Gehry returned to furniture design in 1992 with a remarkably energetic line of furniture for Knoll
with frames and seating made of bent, lightweight wooden strops. (The pieces have names, such as Power Play and Cross Check, derived from ice hockey.) In 2004, Heller released a group of twisted, faceted furnishings in molded polyethylene meant to evoke Gehry’s architecture. But — whether its tableware, jewelry, or furniture — all Gehry’s designs do that--sharing an animated aesthetic built on a solid foundational core. To possess a piece of Gehry design is to own one of his buildings, in miniature.The Stool 60 Giveaway. Sign up for our emails and a chance to win this ingenious stackable stool.Frank Gehry was one of the first designers to produce cardboard furniture, having created the Wiggle side chair in 1972. Manufacturers had been seeking an alternative to plastic since the 1960s but struggled to find anything that could compete with its light flexibility.At that time, cardboard was often just a single layer and attempts to reinforce it were made by folding and inserting tabs and slots.
But Gehry, who was born in 1929, came up with a solution thanks in part to childhood spent playing in his grandfather’s hardware store every Saturday morning, building villages and cities from scraps of plywood.After a stint as a truck driver and a radio announcer, Gehry turned to architecture and eventually graduated in the 1950s. According to Vitra, the Swiss contemporary furniture company that has produced Gehry’s cardboard furniture designs since 1986, the architect saw a pile of corrugated cardboard outside his office one day and began to experiment. He was already using cardboard to build architecture models and realised that it became very strong when glued together.The resulting series of furniture was called Easy Edges and included the Wiggle side chair. The furniture was made by gluing layers of card in alternating directions. The Wiggle chair and table were hugely successful but Gehry was unhappy because the prices did not conform to his philosophy that furniture should be affordable to all.