MoMa (The Museum of Modern Art, New York) has been the creator of the original idea of designing little chairs - a craft project for families.
I really like the idea of using great artists as an inspiration for our art projects, so this time we further developed the MoMa challenge, being inspired by Marcel Breuer.
He was a Hungarian-born Bauhaus architect and furniture designer: at the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair which are among the "10 most important chairs of the 20th century".
The tubular steel chairs were inspired of Breuer's bicycle-handlebar. he thought that it was a material which was light, but strong and durable and suitable for mass production.
The “Wassily” chair was named after the painter Vasily (or Wassily) Kandinsky, Breuer’s friend and fellow Bauhaus instructor, who had praised the design when it was first produced. The Cesca chair got it's name after Marcel Breuer's daughter, Francesca.
The distinctive style developed by Bauhaus furniture designers is based on the principle of simplicity. Works were meant to be functional above all else ... and this is exactly was MoMa's original idea: design a chair with a function in mind, then think about design and make sure that they work together.
We decided to use Playmobil figures to test the chairs, which made the end target real, visible and interesting also.
Creating the chairs was really fun, one idea followed the other and we also tried to recreate some of the MoMa examples. the most difficult part was to stop trying out new ideas.
This process is teaching the little Bears how to plan-design-make, teaches a little bit of engineering, helps to understand how different materials behave etc. Because the making of these little seats is so quick, it teaches also to try-and-fail and try again and again new ideas.
All you need is cardboard paper, plain sheets of paper, scissors, tape, glue, straws and anything else you find in your household - this time we used egg box and toothpicks.
First we played around a bit with paper, how you can make this material stronger, suitable to build furnitures.
Then little Bear has created his first chairs:
Later we tried new ideas, where he required a little help and we tried together also some of the MoMa examples.
When we finished a few chairs, it was time to test them with our Playmobil heroes... For our greatest pleasure, all chairs passed the test and the Plamobil guys seemed to be very comfy...
