Diversionary Daily

Needs no introduction

Swan and Egg Chairs in their natural habitat.

Posted on Monday, September 10, 2007 | 2 Comments

Two in two days

Just doing my bit to tip my chair-to-non-chair posting ratio in favour of chairs.

The Opera House makes a beautiful photo subject.

Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 | 1 Comments

It’s been some time

It occurs to me that it's been some time since this site has been graced by a photo of a chair — 106 days if I’m not mistaken — so here’s one to set help fix that.

Oh, and I think there’s some famous tourism icon out of focus in the background.

Posted on Monday, July 23, 2007 | 0 Comments

Very Red

While trawling through my photos yesterday I realised that there's a stack from earlier travels that never quite made it online.

So while I'm sitting here in the London spring sunshine over the Easter long weekend I'm going to kick things off with a photo of the lobby bar at the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, which I've already raved about. It's loaded up with red and black Swan chairs, and along the bar itself are lines of glossy red Series 7 chairs on giant bar-sized legs.

It's all very hip. And very red.

Posted on Sunday, April 8, 2007 | 0 Comments

In Their Natural Habitat

Witness the Swan chair in its natural habitat, in this case the hotel foyer at the SAS Royal Copenhagen. The chairs are arranged around low tables in small pods of five or six, between the front door and the check-in and concierge desk.

From the bar at the side of the foyer you can sit and watch the bizarre dance of the hotel staff constantly realigning the chairs so they look picture-perfect.

As people move through the space they'd stop, sit in the chairs and then get up and move on, leaving their chair slightly out of the previously perfect visual arrangement around the table. So the concierge would scuttle out from the desk and do a lap of the room fixing the chairs so they all looked just right.

Then someone else would waltz through, sit, leave a chair slightly out of place, and the dance begins again.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 | 3 Comments

Happy Man

While I was in Copenhagen I had pondered a pilgrimage to visit the SAS Royal Copenhagen hotel, which is usually described as the first "designer" hotel in the world.

Pretty much the entire place, from the exterior to the chairs, cutlery and doorhandles, was designed in the swinging 1960's by Danish designer Arne Jacobsen. Of particular interest for me were the chairs: this is the hotel that Jacobsen's famous (and my favourite) Swan and Egg chairs were created for.

So I spent a couple of nights in the uber-luxury of the Royal, surrounded by Swans, Eggs, and Series 7 chairs. For someone who's slightly weird about chairs, those first two in particular, the place is just a little exciting.

Of course plenty has changed since the sixties and the hotel's been redesigned since Jacobsen was let loose on the hotel, though they've kept the chairs and a few other bits and pieces.

I went a little silly with photos while I was there, so I'll be posting them over the next while whenever I find net access. This shot's of one of the Egg chairs in the hotel foyer — they're arranged in little pods across the room.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 | 0 Comments

I'm Lazy

There's plenty to see and do here so I'm going to be lazy and post another London photo rather than mess around with new photos.

So here's a swan in Hyde Park.

In the meantime, if anyone needs me, I'll be down drooling over things at the Danish Design Centre. I hear they have egg chairs.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 | 4 Comments

Still on the road

A few folks have asked when was I heading home.

The answer to that is: not just yet.

There's still a few things to be done while I'm on this side of the world. When our van died we ended up having to skip a visit to Denmark, something I intend to fix with a separate side-trip. And freed from the one-hundred day deadline I've got more time to make silly designer pilgrimages to some favourites and a couple of new ones (I'm sure there's more).

The Danish tourism website even has a design-led tour of Denmark. This is a country after my own heart.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 | 0 Comments

Avoiding the Question

The observant ones among us may have noticed that I haven't actually answered many of the questions you asked me, but I will get to them. They're good questions, deserving of thoughtful answers. And as we've already covered, lately I've been otherwise engaged at work, so my thoughtful writing time has been slightly limited.

One thing I can do with very little thought (and probably in my sleep) is buy silly domain names. Behold my latest acquisition, which will no doubt one day help answer Jesse and Lucinda's question, and probably also a prosecution case against me.

Posted on Friday, June 9, 2006 | 2 Comments

Up close

I'm busy at work (again) so here's a photo instead of a wordy post about chairs, music or music at work.

I guess that means I need to write a post about chairs at work.

Sadly I sit in a nondescript leather executive chair, and not an Aeron or Mirra. But I can dream...

Posted on Friday, June 2, 2006 | 0 Comments

Confessions of an Eames fanboy

I've been toying with when to take my delayed trip to Melbourne, after that deferred trip earlier this year. Early July sounded good, and it just got a bit better.

As part of this year's Melbourne Design Festival, the National Design Centre in Fed Square are hosting an exhibition of the work of Charles and Ray Eames, including a film night showing the Eames' short films.

I'm an Eames fanboy from way back, so let's just say this announcement got my attention. I may have audibly squeeked while reading the list of events.

The Eames-fest also includes a "Chair Camp," which appears to be a chair design workshop. It sounds like it's for students, so I may have to don a beret and pencil moustache to pose as an architecture student and sneak in there.

My one hope is that the touring exhibition includes chairs you can actually sit on. If you've been spared this rant previously, I'll give you the highlights reel: Design is problem solving, ergo a chair is the solution to the problem of needing to sit down. You therefore can't judge the design of a chair without sitting in it (Vitra Design Museum, I'm talking to you).

Uh.

Why do I admit these things in public?

Posted on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 | 0 Comments

Things Not to Yell From a Car Window

Driving through the CBD on Saturday afternoon with some friends, we pulled up at the lights at Milligan and the Terrace, right outside the Woodside tower. I looked across into the foyer at Woodside to see some guy rocking around on one of the little pod-like groups of chairs (I may have previously mentioned this foyer and its red Egg Chair splendour).

Seeing one of my dream chairs roughhoused by some guy, it required restraint to not lean out the car window and yell "OI! YOU! RESPECT THE CHAIR!"

...And in hindsight I'm not sure it's wise to admit these things in public.

Posted on Monday, May 8, 2006 | 4 Comments

Rebuilding

Don't mind me, I'm just tweaking the design a bit. It's not finished, but I got sick of looking at the old one in the meantime. If something's broken, leave a comment and let me know.

In other news, Henning Mankell's novel One Step Behind (part of the Kurt Wallander series) features plenty of depraved criminals and shady-type characters. But I think by far the most chilling is an outwardly normal, upstanding guy called Sture Björkland (I'll never tire of those Scandinavian accents).

Why does he scare me? Let me quote:

"I've always thought that chairs should be hard," Björkland said. "Uncomfortable chairs force you to finish what you have to do more quickly, whether it's eating, thinking of talking to a policeman."

Pure evil, I tell you.

Posted on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 | 8 Comments

Design Is

The other day I had a fairly frustrating conversation with a client trying to discuss the merits of a design. In hindsight I think the frustration boiled down to our different interpretations of of the word 'design.' I was talking about design as a mix of form and function while they were talking almost exclusively about form.

Over my (short) career as a designer my own philosophy has shifted further to the function-first side of the form vs function debate. Which is saying something, since I was never really one for pointless eyecandy when I started designing.

To me, design is about problem-solving and effective communication. Something needs to work first and foremost, and the style comes from (or after) that function.

The iPod's iconic design is driven by a clear function: it plays your music, and the design of the iPod aims to make achieving that task incredibly simple. The Eames Lounge Chair, easily one of the most famous chairs of the last century, is at heart an incredibly comfortable chair (if you haven't had the pleasure, track down a showroom and try one out). London Underground's geography-defying tube map makes understanding a complex network of train lines easy by adopting the visual language of circuit diagrams, and in the process created a new standard for the presentation of route maps across the world (and even for showing the mixing of music genres).

Me? I think in most instances form should follow function.

So then, what does design mean to you?

Posted on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 | 1 Comments

That chair thing

I think I'm going through a chair phase again, and it's the usual suspects on the wishlist: Eames, Jacobsen... I'm seriously digging the Eames Chair on the right, and one of these days I'll hunt down a store in Perth with them on display so I can find out just how comfortable they are (I'm told very, despite the looks).

There's a design-is-problem-solving rant there, and anyone who's heard the story about our design class' trip to the Vitra chair exhibition years ago knows how it ends. I'll save everyone else the pain and move on quickly.

Continue reading "That chair thing"

Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 | 1 Comments