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"I read recent statistics that the average age of Japanese people in 2010..."
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Comfort and Discomfort 1999

Paperback
16,5x 24 cm
152 pages
Illustrations: 180 colour, 95 black and white

Comfort and discomfort takes stock of the 20th century's extraordinary inventiveness in the field of furniture comfort and contradicts its bad reputation in this field. The 20th century has, as far as the chair is concerned, made several typological inventions that have been highly revelatory of new attitudes to comfort: the moulded chair that unifies seat and back in a single piece, the 'culbuto' chair set on a hemispherical base and the mechanism chair that adapts itself to one's every movement. The development of the moulded chair, part of the research into lightweight structures begun at the beginning of the century, faithfully reflects the rise in mass individualism over the whole century. The 'culbuto' or hyper mobility chair, with its cousins the sit-stand chair, the three-legged, multi-legged and legless chair, are all objects which overcodify signs of mobility, vigilance (or precarity). And lastly, the mechanism chair responds to the need for assisted mobility and is clearly symptomatic of the aging of the European population.

  

Contents :


Preface by Henri Griffon, president of Industries Françaises de l'Ameublement, texts by Christine Colin (Typologies of comfort and discomfort), Serge Faucherau (The mobile scale of comfort), Pierre Etienne Feertchak (Ergonomy, the source of new markets), interviews with Jean-Claude Kaufmann by Véronique Dupuy, Maryse and Gabriel Linguanotto (Addform), Bruno Rousseau (Mobalpa) and Paul-Valère Roullet (Bultex) by Florence Michel, Michel Roset (Ligne Roset) by Brigitte Fitoussi, Thierry Torres (Lama Confort), Fred Müller (Wilkhahn France), Christine Pellerin (Vitra France), Alain Froger (Herman Miller), projects and designs by Tarkett Sommer, Martin Szekely, Pierre Charpin, Radi designers, Renaud Thiry, Xavier Moulin, Marc Atlan, Nestor Perkal, Olivier Védrine, Mathilde Bretillot, Frédérique Valette, Chrisian Ghion, Matt Sindall, Appartement D, Dominique Prévot, Sébastien Bergne, Domingo Scali, Claudio La Viola, Pascal Bauer, Jérôme Tarby, Jean-Pierre Lévêque and Frédérique Rudant, Christophe Labbé, Richard Houis, René Bouchara, Studio Ecart, Azumi's, Designers anonymes, Frédéric de Luca. Graphic design: Antoine and Manuel, Manuel Warosz, Violette Neyret, copy editor: Matthieu Poupard, translation: Ronald Corlette Theuil.