Well Tempered Chair

Ron Arad / Vitra1986OBJECTS

A club chair made of four sheets of spring steel, where the bend that gives the form is also the only thing holding it up.

A black and white photograph of the chair from the front: a curled steel back, a rolled seat and two arms that loop outward like ribbons, standing on flat side panels lined with bolts. — Well Tempered Chair, 1986, made by Vitra. Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of the Vitra Design Museum, 2015 (2015-13-1).
PHOTOGRAPH Philadelphia Museum of Art / philamuseum.orgReferenced from its source. Rights not established by SIMULACRA.

Plates 2

Overview

An armchair by Ron Arad, designed in 1986 and made by Vitra. Four sheets of tempered steel are looped and bolted with wing nuts: two for the arms, one for the seat, one for the back. MoMA's exhibition text says the shape was taken from the plush club chair.

The steel is not pressed or welded into shape. The Vitra Design Museum describes the form as generated by screwing the sheets under tension into arches, so the spring steel always pushes back toward flat. The Philadelphia Museum of Art's example measures 77.2 × 100.5 × 82 cm.

What to notice

01Four sheets, nothing elseCount the parts: one back, one seat, two arms. There is no frame and no padding. The flat panels that reach the floor are not legs. With only four sheets, they have to be part of the arm loops.
02The bolts are on showWing nuts run in a line along each side panel. They are the joint, the adjustment and the only ornament, and nothing covers them.
03Held in tensionEvery curve is a sheet trying to spring flat and being stopped by a bolt. Loosen the nuts and the chair would open out. The form is a stored force.
04Club chair in reverseThe outline is the soft, rounded armchair of a gentlemen's club. In polished steel the same outline reads as cold and edged, which is the joke the name makes.

Historical context

Arad was born in Tel Aviv in 1951 and studied at the Architectural Association in London. In 1981 he co-founded the studio One Off with Caroline Thorman and began working in concrete and steel; his first piece was the Rover Chair, a scrapyard car seat on pipe couplings. MoMA's 2009 retrospective, Ron Arad: No Discipline, calls the Well Tempered Chair his first commission from a major manufacturer.

The name is a pun. Tempering is the heat treatment that lets steel return to its shape after bending, and MoMA notes the sheet gives the seat some bounce. In 2002 Arad reworked it for Vitra as the Bad Tempered Chair in carbon, Kevlar and glass fibre with wing nuts. MoMA quotes him describing the original as “all skin—no bones, fat, or muscle.”

Connections

Formal resemblance

steel plate bent and left visible ↔ with
Torqued Ellipses, Richard Serra
Serra rolls steel plate into curves at the scale of a room; Arad bends sheet into curves at the scale of a body. In both, the curve is how the steel stands up.
stainless steel as soft form ↔ with
Nitush-Aroosh, Nitush + Aroosh
Both make polished steel read as something soft. Nitush-Aroosh inflate it with water pressure; Arad loops it under tension.
steel furniture finished precisely ↔ with
Saintleo, Leon McKay / Saintleo
Saintleo finishes raw steel to a standard it is not usually given. Arad's chair is polished sheet held by plain wing nuts. Both treat steel furniture as exact rather than heavy.