Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer also created some furniture designs in the course of his career, often in cooperation with his daughter Anna Maria. This lounge chair with footstool was created around 1972. It became widely known when Oscar Niemeyer used it to furnish his design for the headquarters of the French Communist Party (PCF) in Paris. The seat cushion rests on a base structure of two steel strips. The back strip runs flat along the ground before describing a curve to support the pivoting backrest. Another version of the model has a higher base, with the steel strips bent nearly in the form of circular segments. Both models were initially produced by Mobilier International in Paris. In the late 1970s, production was taken over by Tendo Brasileira in São Paulo, Brazil, but with the base structure now made of plywood. Parallels to Niemeyer’s built works are obvious; just as his buildings, the lounge chair betrays his preference for organic curves and combines classic modernism’s rigour with the freer aesthetic and sophisticated style of post-war Latin-American architecture.
Text: Henrike Büscher
