Legendary Longevity
Much has been written about the built-in obsolescence of our throwaway society these days but there are some things - things that are the very embodiment of 'classic design' - that have longevity at their core. This is literally the case with Arne Jacobsen's stacking chairs.
Each chair passes through 22 pairs of hands during its manufacture; the nine layers of wood veneer are carefully selected for homogenous strength of grain; the grain of two of the layers is laid perpendicular to the others to add strength, along with two layers of cotton stout; the UV bond between the seat and the frame is tested to a force of 300 Newtons; the bend between the seat and the back can take a load of 85kg - that means that if you turn the chair upside down, you can actually stand on it with total confidence (as shown above). The quality of these chairs means that they represent a solid investment and, when they are bought for a family home, they also become a treasured and valued heirloom that will last for generations.
To demonstrate this longevity it is worth looking at situations in which the chairs get a lot of use. The Ant Chair was designed in 1952 for Nova Nordisk Pharmaceuticals and some of the chairs from that date are still in use at the company nearly 60 years later.
In 1962 Arne Jacobsen designed St Catherine's College in Oxford. His designs went further than just the fabric of the building with cutlery, furniture, and lampshades being of his own idiosyncratic design. Series 7 Chairs grace the Library and the Refectory and many of these chairs too are still in use today.
The Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank receives 24 million visitors a year, a great many of whom sit in the foyers and restaurants of the building at some stage during their visit. The RFH started using the Series 7 Chair in 1995 and some of those original chairs are still in use. In 2007, during a major refurbishment, 650 more chairs were purchased and since then - a potential 147,000 'bums on seats' for each chair - there have been only minor faults on just six chairs.
Until the end of 2011, you can invest in this legendary longevity and also make a significant saving - buy six of the Series 7, Ant, Grand Prix or Lily chairs and only pay for five - equivalent to a discount of over 16%.
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