Chair Anatomy

A comprehensive design resource that reveals how the iconic chairs of the 20th and 21st centuries have been designed for mass production.

Chair Anatomy reveals in photos and illustrations the form and the construction details – the anatomy – of a selection of nearly sixty chairs chosen from the last 160 years of modern chair design. It also introduces the designers behind these chairs, their backgrounds and their routes to creating the chairs. In reducing chairs to their constituent parts, the book gets to the heart of each design: how pieces are designed and produced to fit together; why a certain material imparts a certain quality; functional advance or comfort level; and how the chair’s structure can withstand stress while being elegant and economical to produce. In short, a chair is architecture in miniature.

This revised and expanded edition features five new chairs, including the Hemp Chair by Werner Aisslinger (2011), Bruto by Konrad Lohöfener (2018) and Chubby by Dirk van der Kooij (2012). Each represents new technological, constructional and aesthetic solutions.