Furniture by Architects

*Features 80 projects by top international architects who have extended their talents to furniture design, including Zaha Hadid Design, Foster + Partners, John Portman & Associates, UNStudio, Fritz Hansen, Swatt | Miers Architects and Griffin Enright Architects*Explores the phenomenon of architect-designed furniture through history, revealing what makes their designs so unique and enduring Furniture by Architects features an eclectic range of extraordinary and eye-catching furniture designs by leading contemporary architects. Following the tradition of great masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, these top architects and designers have extended their talents to create beautiful and unusual furniture pieces and collections for the rapidly growing and increasingly global market for designer furniture. The furniture pieces showcased in this book include tables, chairs, sofas, benches, cabinets, shelving and lighting fixtures as well as some unique one-off pieces. The featured styles range from futuristic to classical, and geometric to organic, covering the full spectrum of contemporary furniture design. Materials used range from state-of-the-art plastics and the best quality timber to found objects and recycled metals. The book explores why, historically, so many iconic furniture pieces have been designed by architects. Think of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Chair and the now ubiquitous Eames Lounge and Ottoman. Essentially, the same fundamental principles used for designing extraordinary buildings can be applied at a much smaller scale to create outstanding pieces of furniture, which embrace form and function to become highly collectable objects of art. Furniture by Architects will appeal to collectors and creators of designer and custom furniture, as well as architects, interior designers and everyone with an interest in high-quality design.