“And really, isn’t that what design is meant to do? Challenge us, provoke us, unsettle our expectations. Comfort is welcome. But discomfort can be, too,” concludes a recent editorial in the New York Times’ T Magazine. Oh, really? That’s what design is meant to do? A certain kind of architect and designer—or in this case, magazine editor—considers comfort to be the equivalent of complacency. Or is this just a rationalization, a way to justify exposing concrete, painting surfaces black, leaving out upholstery? No one should confuse comfort with good design; comfort is not sufficient, but it is required. And it is difficult. Much easier to “challenge, provoke, and unsettle,” and pretend that “discomfort is welcome.” What rubbish.
Photo: Zig-Zag Chair, Gerrit Rietveld, 1930s
Rubbish indeed! Well said. I appreciate your essays and books.
I suspect Rietveld would very much have balked at being characterized as a provocateur. As with many of his time he had a social conscience and was concerned to develop simplified forms appropriate to machine production at low cost for working-class households. In this he proved not terribly successful, facing the same economic realities that had stymied Morris and Stickley before him and many of the Moderns that followed. Overcome at last in our time by IKEA.
Plus Rietveld had a cabinet shop to run and employees to support. I don’t know but it seems reasonable to suppose that many more people enjoyed a set of Rietveld kitchen cabinets than ever sat in one of his Red/Blue chairs. How provocative could he afford to be?
His furniture isn’t even all that uncomfortable anyway. A few years ago I made a copy of the Red/Blue chair, and it’s really not a bad sit even for an aged skinny guy like myself. The seat and back angles show some careful thought. Not as comfortable as an IKEA Poang to be sure, but not much is. Anyway, people have been sitting on hard surfaces for millennia.