The Evolution of the Cantilever Chair
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The cantilever chair strives to provide weightless seating and is an icon of modernity. A chair that has two legs instead of four and that later went down in design history.
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Graphic illustrating the evolution of the backless cantilever chair from 1920 to the present day – the series shows the development from wooden frames to bent tubular steel.
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This first one-legged cantilever chair consists of a 3,30m long piece of pipe, which is bent in a machine to six equal radii. Seat and back are upholstered. It was created in 1982 after several pre-stages and prototypes of asymmetric chairs in cooperation between Stefan Wewerka and Tecta. View product
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Among all of Marcel Breuer’s iconic designs, the D40 from 1928 holds a special place. You could trace its outlines with your eyes closed. An elegant S-curve describing a slight diagonal in the upper third – the backrest. A dynamic experience that exudes calm. Because every curve of the steel tube is finely balanced. Arch-curve-countercurve: a construction that harmoniously reconciles all contrasts. This was possible due to bent tubular steel – a technology that revolutionised furniture design. And made it lighter than ever before. Marcel Breuer wrote in 1924: “A chair…should not be horizontal/vertical, nor should it be expressionist, nor constructivist,” it should be a “good chair, then it will match a good table.” View product
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1926 saw the launch of the architectural collective “Der Ring” with members including Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. That same year, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed the most beautiful chair of the century with a single brushstroke: the Weißenhof Chair. A year later, in 1927, it was displayed at the Weißenhof exhibition in Stuttgart. In 1985 Stefan Wewerka described it as “the most beautiful ‘chair construction’ since the throne of Charlemagne.” The first sketches were influenced by the gas tube chair without hind legs created by the architect Mart Stam. Sergius Ruegenberg reminisced on the birth of the Weißenhof chair in 1985: “Mies returned from Stuttgart in November 1926 and told us about Mart Stam and his chair concept. We had a drawing board on the wall, on which Mies sketched the Stam chair; rectangular, starting from the top.” View product
