Tom Price's Meltdown Chair
While perusing the blogosphere today, I clicked my way to this demystifying video on British designer Tom Price's Meltdown chair. Price is a practitioner of the common-materials-cum-high-design camp (think the Campana Brothers and Kwangho Lee) and in his Meltdown series, which began in 2008, he's taken scorching heat to swaths of polypropylene sheets, piles of fleece jackets, skeins of plastic rope, and yards of PVC hoses. Though his work is well known by now, his production methods were still a mystery to me. It all started when he thought about a rather simple act: singeing the end of a rope to prevent it from fraying. In this video, Price talks about how the design process starts (would you have guesed that he starts by wrapping rope around a beach ball?), the mid-century design icon that provides the form of the heated mold that deliquesces the seat, and why he's happy to sit in the grey area between design and art.
Tom Price, meltdown series from Victor Hunt on Vimeo.
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I would think that melting this "rope" would release hazardous gases. If not, what kink of rope is it? The whole process is fascinating but I hope it is not hazardous.
I suppose that what is shown in the video is artistic and one off but didn't the Eames come up with the design of the seat originally? However, sorry to be a downer. I thought that an important thrust of Dwell is sustainability. How much pp rope (ie. imported oil) went into that project and how much energy was spent to reform the chair? Sadly, I think not very sustainable.
I love the texture and colors used. . . the playfulness found in these chairs. It is eye catching and I would move to sit in it if I saw it in a room. . .
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