A Formal Analysis of Eero Aarnio's Ball Chair
Chairs are classically depicted with four legs, a seat, a back rest and often with arms. This has been the case since the 5th Century BC when the Greeks invented the Klismos. This chair is referred to in Homer’s epic The Iliad where Klismos signifies an armchair used by Achilles. Some 2,500 years later, chair design is much the same with form following function. However, as the designer Eero Aarnio once commented;
“a chair is a chair, is a chair, is a chair … but a seat does not necessarily have to be a chair”
This essay will be looking at the unconventional design of Eero Aarnio’s Ball Chair in specific context with its place in the Pop movement; how, despite its unconventionality, it still embraces classic Scandinavian design ideas, and changing world views on fashion, design and technology in the 1960s and 1970s.
The main principles of Scandinavian design are functionality and simplicity. Scandinavians believe in the idea that a person should exist in harmony with their environment and in the longevity of products; that a design’s purpose is to improve daily life and is strongly linked to nature. Finnish Modernism arose from this, adopting designs and ideas from the Modernist movement that followed home-grown traditions and local materials. Industrialisation took place later in Scandinavian countries as they were keen to protect their traditional handicrafts and skills. They thought that beautiful and functional objects should be accessible to everyone, not just those with money. This was also a key point in the Modernist movement.
The 1960s saw a new generation detaching from the functional furniture and formality of their parents’ lifestyles. The post-war generation stopped thinking about where they came from and started thinking about where they were going. The West in the 60s was consumed by the idea of the American Dream, a sort-of philosophy of materialism. Young people wanted instant visual gratification and change; they had no time for the tradition or tastes set by previous generations which, in turn, were dictated by class and education.
Design in the 1950s was primarily functional. Modernist designs were generally clean and simple. The 1960s saw a return to colourful decoration as the public had been effectively starved of ornament during the austere times following the Second World War. They now demanded greater choice. Trends included an eclectic mix of Art Nouveau elements, eg. The Biba logo (Ill.4), and reproductions of paisley and William Morris prints in bright, psychedelic colours.
Pop Art generated exchanges between the highbrow – elite, highly cultured and sophisticated – and what was perceived as lowbrow, common or even vulgar. Popular culture at the time was full of comic books, rock’ n’ roll music, sci-fi, glossy adverts in magazines and on billboards and films. Pop Art encompassed all of this and opposed anything seen to be elitist and, therefore, inaccessible in the traditional fine art medium. Many designers and commercial artists fluidly overlapped what was art and what was commercial design. Richard Hamilton wrote in a letter in 1959;
"Pop Art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business".
Habitat, for example, brought modern design to the high street. Many Sixties artists endeavoured to involve the audience or spectator as an active participant in the piece. As such, artists and designers became interchangeable as a room became the domestic equivalent to a canvas. Pop designers often explored anti-design, or counter design, which challenged the functionalist principles of the Modernist designers.
Austerity was a thing of the past. It was a decade of extreme and rapid change, and of technological advances. Plastic was cheaper than ever and it swamped the market. It was easy to clean, seamless and modern and, therefore, aspirational. Improved manufacturing techniques meant that plastics could be moulded into any shape, rigid foam plastics were light and strong. Designers were motivated to make quality design available to the mass market, and synthetic materials helped to make this possible. Many designers, notably Verner Panton who produced the Panton chair from a single plastic form in 1967, sought to manufacture many items in a single operation in order to reduce production costs.
Born in 1932, Eero Aarnio studied at the Helsinki Institute of Industrial Arts. After graduating he took jobs as a decorator, photographer and designer before creating his own office as an Interior and Industrial Designer in 1962. Previously, and in line with the Scandinavian principles, Aarnio had worked mostly with natural materials, notably Jattujakkare which is a wicker basket chair. Aarnio became interested in man-made materials and started experimenting with fibreglass. He designed the Ball Chair (Ill.1) in 1963 when he moved into his first home. He didn’t have a “big chair” so Aarnio designed his own. The intention of the chair was that it be big enough to fit the designer, his wife and two children all at the same time. As his sketches for the chair progressed, the spherical shape became his unusual choice.
“I guess I wanted to rebel a little when I designed the ball chair. Things don’t have to stay the same.” Eero Aarnio, 2012
The Cold War provided much of the international backdrop to the Sixties, and the idea that space conquest was within grasp provided a sense of optimism that advanced technologies could be used for the greater good. As President John F Kennedy remarked in 1961,
"We choose to go to the moon, and we intend to win"
The USSR launched Sputnik I in 1957 and the first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. By the time the US set foot on the moon in 1969, astronauts were already heroes. The Space Race had a big impact on the popular consciousness and style. People now desired space-age furniture with futuristic shapes, giving the effect of floating in space.
The furniture industry had not seen a chair in this form and material before. The combination of a sleek, organic form and a modern, industrial manufacturing process was typical of space-age design – in the world, but not of it. Aarnio, however, insists that his Ball Chair is not based on space:
“The media said that the chair was a typical Space Age product. Sputnik had just been launched and it was a ball. I always said firmly that the chair has nothing to do with space. The idea came from me thinking about what is the best shape for fibreglass and plastic products. It is a round shape. You get maximum strength from minimum material.” (Aarnio 2012)
The Ball is a playful and fun design in bright colours. The original colours for the Ball Chair were black, white, red and orange. It is like a nest that cocoons the sitter, giving a sense of privacy, muffling sounds from outside while amplifying those made within the space and creating a tiny room within a room. Aarnio installed a red telephone in his original chair and subsequent versions have included speakers. Aarnio’s designs are nearly always flowing, organic forms though function remains key to the design;
“Solving a problem is always the most important thing. I design functional, everyday objects and I want to get the most out of those objects.” (Aarnio 2012)
The Ball Chair is made of moulded fibreglass on a metal swivelling stand to give the impression that the sitter is floating in the ball. The fibreglass is very light so that the chair can be easily moved and so the user can spin the chair around. The inside is lined with fabric-covered foam or fibrefill which is segmented like an orange and sewn together in the centre. The main two seat cushions sit loosely on the lining. As far as size was concerned, it was to be large enough to fit the whole family while also being able to fit through the door. Having the front part of the chair with the curve effectively sliced off makes it possible to manoeuvre the chair through the house easily.
It could be said that the chair has no details because the entire chair is a detail. The smooth moulded exterior makes the chair appear seamless, save for the edge of the interior lining, and there is little contrast between the hard shell and soft cushions.
In 1966, furniture manufacturer Asko presented the Ball Chair at the International Furniture Fair in Cologne. They had cautiously only made 100 of the unusual design. It was an instant hit - dozens of chairs were ordered straight away from 30 different countries. The chair was sought after by celebrities such as Mary Quant, who put one in her London shop, Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr and even the Shah of Iran. More recently, the chair has been used by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood in her shows.
“It is something between a piece of furniture and a piece of architecture and at the same time embodies both the mobile and the established, the fixed.”
Aarnio expanded on the Ball chair design in 1968 with a hanging chair called the Bubble. This was a suspended ball made of clear plastic as Aarnio had realised that it was often too dark inside the Ball chair to read. He further looked at reducing the production process by literally blowing a bubble from the heated acrylic sheet, eliminating the need for a mould. Further designs like the Pastil (Ill.3), which was designed partly to eliminate excess packaging as Aarnio noted that it fitted snugly inside the Ball chair when they were shipped together, and Tomato chairs also had rounded, organic shapes which were most unlike the rectangular furniture shapes that had been standard for centuries and, indeed, appeared to have landed from another world.
These unusual designs were right at home with the 1960s dreams of space conquest and living on the moon. In 1968, Matti Suuronen designed Futuro. The Futuro home was a sectional ellipsoid plastic shell intended to be used as a ski cabin, however the marketing team had far bigger ideas and promoted Futuro as “the house of the future” that could be transported ready-built by helicopter or delivered in pieces to be built on site.
While Aarnio’s designs reflected the fashion for bright colours and bold shapes of the decade, he did not subscribe to the disposable ethic of the Pop movement, where fun took precedent over quality and longevity, and continued to concentrate on high-quality durable products, exploring the potential of plastics over mass-production methods. The late 1960s saw a general awareness of the ecological impact of mass consumerism and the effect it had on the environment and natural resources, which was more in line with the Scandinavian ethic for quality. One of the main issues with the disposability of the new plastic products was that they were, in fact, quite difficult to dispose of. Plastics didn’t decompose in landfill, and incineration produces noxious gases. In 1973 the price of crude oil quadrupled, sending the cost of plastic production into orbit and attitudes towards plastic changed. There followed an international recession and the throwaway attitudes of the previous decade were deemed irresponsible. Natural materials rose in popularity as people became more aware of how reliance on limited resources like oil was making the world more vulnerable. The Ball Chair was therefore considered non-ecological and went out of fashion. Despite this, Aarnio says that he prefers to think of things in the long term making memorable and durable products;
“Quality will last. These products are recycled down the generations.” (Aarnio 2016)
Aarnio was right. The retro boom in the 1990s made plastic furniture popular again. Aarnio’s designs were once again desirable and were revived by the Finnish company Adelta. He took this opportunity to update the chair and create new designs, such as the Pony and Formula seats and Tipi, which is a chair with bird legs. The Ball Chair has appeared in films such as Dazed and Confused and Mars Attacks!, all of which are either set in the 1960s or 70s, or distinctly draw from the fashion of the decade. It also featured in The Who’s rock opera Tommy and in the television series The Prisoner.
Aarnio’s own home (Ill.3) just outside Helsinki embraces traditional Finnish design – clean lines and a light, neutral palette – and blends his own colourful designs in with these. The bold coloured plastics cheerfully complement the natural materials as opposed to overwhelming it.
Art and design have always been influenced by the social and political landscape and while the social opinions of the past may have become outdated, art and design of the time will likely remain relevant or maintain a following. The changing fashions and technologies of the 1960s have been cemented in the popular psyche as classic, sometimes tacky but always incredibly distinctive. The Scandinavian inclination towards using natural materials and maintaining traditional methods of production is important to their heritage and to design history in general. The longevity of Eero Aarnio’s Ball Chair is testament to this and is also is entirely in line with the Scandinavian way of thinking – despite embracing new technology and manmade material, it prioritises functionality while still maintaining a beautiful product. The chair, while being strikingly 1960s in style, is still relevant. He combines material, functionality and aesthetics in the best way to maintain this relevance.
“Sustainability is a good term. The best design is usually made by our grandparents.” (Aarnio, 2014)
