Shiro Kuramata

These two chairs, designed twelve years apart, display Kuramata’s explorations of transparency in different materials—the first is made of glass, and the second, acrylic. With its sleek, refined lines, the glass-made Armchair was inspired by the futuristic atmosphere of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Miss Blanche Chair similarly draws on an American cultural reference. Named after the main heroine of Tennessee Williams’s 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, the chair comprises acrylic resin panels that contain artificial red roses and rests on purple anodized aluminum legs. The floating flowers are an exquisite but rare instance in Kuramata’s work in which figurative elements are combined with abstract forms.

Kuramata was a Japanese designer who often experimented with materials. For this chair, he wanted the paper flowers to “float.” To do that, he carefully positioned the flowers inside liquid acrylic resin (a type of plastic) using tweezers, a tool usually used for plucking hairs or splinters. How do you think it would feel to sit in this chair?

Now think of two other objects or materials that look or feel very different: How would you combine them into something a person could use? How would you like people to use your creation?