The Pastilli by Finnish designer Eero Aarnio is one of the best examples of the relaxed, informal seating culture that was so popular in the domestic landscapes of that decade and an icon of 1960s design. Its smooth, rounded forms are typical of the plastic furniture of the era. However, the impression that it had simply been pressed into a pill-like form is misleading; the chair consists of two fibreglass sections, laminated by hand over a mould and then glued together. With Pastilli, Aarnio takes a humorous approach while also creating a new chair typology: the low rocking lounge chair. Thanks to its rounded underside, the chair sways and turns pleasantly; indeed, contemporary eyewitnesses described the experience of sitting in a Pastilli as being ‘difficult to remain formal, stiff, dignified, and serious’. This illustrates how Aarnio saw his designs as a means to support interaction and communication. Also citing a banal object enlarged to a different scale was much more than a designer’s joke. It reflected the changing role of everyday objects while also invoking the contemporary phenomenon of Pop Art, which used changes of scale and context as an artistic strategy. The iconic status that this can give to a design object is underlined by the numerous glowing reviews for the Pastilli, as well as by its many different applications: it has served as a sledge for riding down snowy hills and taken onto placid waters for fishing, just as it has functioned as a washbasin and a water toy.
Text: Anniina Koivu
