I DIDNT TOUCH WALTER GROPIUS, I ADDED GUNTA STÖLZL!
The F51N is one of the icons of the last century, as director’s chair in Walter Gropius office, both in Weimar and then later in Dessau.
Designed in 1923 this chair is a powerful functional object, comfortably, yet deeply connected to its Bauhaus heritage.
Rather then reworking the architectural structure of the chair, I focused on connecting the chair’s materiality both to the present and back to the Bauhaus legacy.
Central to the school’s financial stability was the weaving department, headed by Gunta Stölzl.
Stölzl, first student, and later master of the weaving department created revolutionary, modern textiles on the loom. My goal was adding similar haptics and colours schemes to the upholstered parts of the chair, and treating the ‘false’ cantilever structure, the architecture of the chair, as secondary by applying a surface in stark contrast to the matt upholstery fabrics.
The re-edition of the chair premiered at the imm Cologne in January 2019 and a second take on the design was introduced in Milan in 2023.
In November 2024 curator Jun Yang chose the F51N 2023 as additional furniture in the original Walter Gropius’ Direktorenzimmer in Dessau as part of his exhibition ‘More than real’. This iconic room, previously only accessible to visitors through the booking of a guided tour at the Bauhaus Foundation, will be open to the public for the next two years.