Marc Newson is one of the most influential designers in recent decades. He rose to international fame with his design for the Lockheed Lounge, which he started working on in 1985/86. The design stemmed from his invitation to exhibit at Roslyn Oxley9 in 1986 – then, as now, one of the most prestigious Australian art galleries. Newson was asked to work with ‘the cheapest possible materials’ and manufacturing possibilities were limited, therefore he decided to make the body of the Lockheed Lounge ‘the exact same way you ’d create a surfboard’.
Newson first carved the inner core of the lounge from a block of polyurethane foam without the use of a template. He then coated it with glass fibre reinforced polyester resin and added an outer shell of hammered and riveted aluminium. After the design was presented in 1986 under the name LC1 – in reference to Le Corbusier’s LC 4 lounger – Newson introduced a small but significant change in the headrest’s form. This resulted in the final version of the Lockheed Lounge, which was produced in Sydney, in a small edition of ten, plus four artist’s proofs, including the object shown here.
The Lockheed Lounge was acclaimed by the press in the 1990s and gained some high-profile fans. Its success, however, is also beholden to its many references, some of them subtle and others more obvious. The silhouette of the Lockheed Lounge reminds one of Jacques-Louis David’s famous neoclassical Portrait of "Madame Récamier" (1800). Its dynamic form is both reminiscent of the science fiction scenarios of the 1970s and anticipates the biomorphic ‘blobs’ of 1990s architecture and design made possible by advances in computer-aided design. The riveted aluminium sheets point towards Newson’s fascination with air travel and inspired the name Lockheed as a nod to the well-known aircraft manufacturer.
These eclectic allusions are typical for a new generation of designers such as Ron Arad and Shiro Kuramata, who caught the public’s attention in the 1980s with richly associative sculptural furniture. The Lockheed Lounge’s success also heralded a new trend that became known in the early 2000s as Collectible Design or Design Art. The lounger has repeatedly broken its own record as the most expensive object to be sold during its designer’s lifetime.
Text: Viviane Stappmanns
