Bertoia was not the only designer around 1950 thinking
about the possibilities of chairs in cheap wire mesh, Charles Eames and
his wife Ray worked on a similar, even cheaper, model (note 1).These chairs
are like webs floating in the air: visual lightness was searched for. The
gradual transformation of the curves of the wire net reflects those of
some mathematical three dimensional functions.
Augusto Morello, for example, designed this Bertoya's chair similar
curve on his computer. (note 2)
 |
DArcy Thompson used such functions to illustrate the
mathematical relationships in the morphology of different species. (note3) |
| note 1 |
for the historic details: Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames. Designers
of the twentieth century, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. 1998 (1995), p.240
ff. |
| note 2 |
Augusto Morello, president of the ICSID,the International Organisation
of Design Associations, created a program to draw such functions. Its application
concerning the Bertoia Wire Chair is shown here. |
| note 3 |
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form, Cambridge University
Press, London, 1917
A site concerning Thompson's shape transformations:
http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/shape.html |
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