For the class field trip, we went to Cooper Hewitt which is a design based interactive museum of Smithsonian.  The museum is devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary designs. Cooper Hewitt educates, inspires, and empowers people through design by presenting exhibitions and educational programs and maintaining active publications. In this blog, I will be talking about three famous furniture designers for their art/design work that I found interesting.

DRAWING, BAR GALLIERA, CA. 1950 by Mathieu Matégot

This drawing by Mathieu Mategot, it’s medium is pen and ink, brush and gouache collage on paper. The drawing and the design has a very retro vibe while being very modern even tho it was from 1950. The color in the drawing works very well together almost in harmony. The lines in this drawing make it even more interesting to look at and the use of negative makes it look as it was intended as the true color. The artist does a lot of furniture design which you will see in this bar gallery drawing. All of his art pieces look and feel like a piece of art that you will see in the museum/galleries but on another hand, they also work as they are intended to.

ARMCHAIR, 1976 by SHIRO KURAMATA

This glass armchair because of its special adhesive it looks like the glass is just floating in the air.  Shiro Kuramata just like the previous designer is also a furniture designer who does interior designs.  Such a minimalistic piece that looks very fragile and transparent taking the shape of an ordinary armchair which is supposed to hold the weight of a full grown person. This armchair is very intriguing to watch as it makes us question the use and the strength of the glass and the comfort as it made from a very fragile material such as glass. Shiro Kuramata designs of furniture are very sharp and edgy while being made of material that makes it transparent or material that the furniture is not intended for.

SLICE ARMCHAIR, 1999 by MATHIAS BENGTSSON

This wooden arm chair by Matthias Bengtsson was very interesting to watch but would’ve loved to sit on it to see how comfortable it is as it does look very comfortable because of how ergonomic it is. The slice or layers look like the topography of mountains and I liked how its made from one block of wood. The designer has made many renditions of this same design of an armchair but with different materials. Mathias Bentsson is also a furniture designer who makes designs that represent nature.

In Cooper Hewitt when we get into the museum we are given a pen that we can interact with touch tables that they have at every floor where we can look at art pieces and make our own design and save it to the pen so later we can view it on their website with the online code provided with the ticket. Looking through the art pieces that I liked which I selected through the pen and it seemed that most of the art pieces designers were furniture designer so I made this field trip blog about them.