Panton Chair by Verner Panton: a revolutionary design since 1959

La Panton Chair It was designed by Verner Panton in 1959, but went into series production in 1967 for Vitra, due to the difficulty involved in producing this design.

Since the early 50s, Verner Panton worked hard on this design, of which there were some precursor models and a lot of research. It was a revolutionary S-shaped design (hence its name, S-Chair) manufactured in only one piece Made of rigid polyurethane foam with a satin finish.

En 1979 production was discontinued because it became apparent that the polyurethane It was not durable enough and was weakening over time.

Four years later and after intensive research, the model was produced again, this time in foam. structural polyurethane, much more expensive. From 1999 it began to be manufactured in polypropylene, although the classic version is still marketed under the name Panton Chair Classic.

The comfort of this chair is due to the combination of a structure of cantilever type (which rests on a single point), an ergonomic line and a slightly flexible material. It can be used individually or grouped together, and is suitable for both indoor and outdoor use. Exterior, as seen in the famous black and white photo of Panton holding an umbrella.

La Panton Chair It has received numerous international design awards and is in the collections of many major museums, including MoMA. Thanks to its expressiveness, it has become an icon of 20th-century design.

Verner Panton was one of the most influential furniture and interior designers of the 20th century. An architect and designer, he was one of the first to introduce the Pop art in the world of furniture, for which he would achieve worldwide fame.

Born in Denmark in 1926, Panton studied at the Technical University of Odense and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1947 to 1951, focusing on color psychologyr, which he would later apply forcefully to his designs and interior.

From 1950 to 1952 he worked as an assistant in the design studio of the architect Arne Jacobsen. During this time, Panton was involved in the design of the Ant, Arne Jacobsen's most famous chair. Panton broke away from the style of the time with soft shapes and natural materials, as he leaned towards synthetic materials, such as plastic, resins, rubber, steel or leatherette. After two years, he abandoned Jacobsen and Denmark's study.

Paton starts his own path

From 1952 to 1955 he travelled around Europe in a bus converted into a drawing office. There he gathered important impressions and established contacts with manufacturers and distributors. In 1955 he opened his own design studio and focused mainly on the design of chairs. In 1955, he launched the first series production of the Bachelor chair and Tivoli chair in collaboration with the furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen, and designed a collapsible weekend house that could also be used as a garage. In 1958, he created a sensation around the world with the Wire Cone Chair (in the image above).

For the brothers Thonet, in Frankenberg, developed the rocking chair S, a cantilever chair made from a single piece of plywood bent under steam pressure, which was a precursor to the Panton chair and which helped him experiment for several years with the application of this principle to plastic.

In 1963, Panton moved to Basel and began working with the furniture manufacturer VitraBy 1967, Vitra had already mastered the new material for the production of the Panton chair and began mass production. The Panton chair helped Verner Panton achieve his breakthrough and led to the world fame.

Already internationally renowned, Panton undertook a multitude of works architecture, interior design and designs, focusing on furniture, but also, with special skill and fascination, on the lighting and textiles.

Top left: Verner Panton and his wife Marianne at their home in Binningen, Switzerland, ca. 1970-72. Right: the current location of the installation in the restaurant of the Kunsthalle Basel.

Between 1972 and 1987, he designed the famous shell lamp for his former home in Binningen, Switzerland, which now hangs semi-permanently in the restaurant of the Kunsthalle Basel museum. Made from hundreds of thousands of discs pearl shell Measuring around 50 mm, the luminaire is very geometric, but at the same time beautifully organic. The colour range of the shells – due exclusively to the position of the light – is astonishing.

In 1971, he redesigned the Varna restaurant in Aarhus where once again Verner Panton focused on color along with geometric pattern and shapes to achieve a unique overall spatial impression.

The structure of the building stands out with a different colour combination for each room. For the interior decoration he used his own designs;Mira-X extensions, Fritz Hansen and Vitra furniture, lighting by Lüber and Louis Poulsen, and created an interior design that attracted attention far beyond Aarhus.

From the late 60s to the mid-70s, the chemical company Bayer rented a pleasure boat for each Cologne Furniture Fair and transformed it into a temporary exhibition hall of a well-known contemporary designer. The main objective was to promote various synthetic products related to home furnishings. Verner Panton He received no less than two commissions to design this exhibition, entitled “Visiona.”

The 1970 exhibition "Visona II" showed the Fantasy Landscape which was created in this environment. The resulting room installation, with vibrant colours and organic shapes, is one of the main milestones of Panton's work. In terms of design history, this installation is considered one of the main spatial designs from the second half of the XNUMXth century.

Offices Spiegel publishing house in Hamburg They are among the most outstanding examples of Panton's interior designs and are one of the few that still exist, at least in part.

For the famous news magazine, which moved to the modernized premises on Hamburg's Ost-West in 1969, Panton designed the entrance area with patio and hall, the cellar and bar areas, the pool for the employees in the basement of the building, the rooms for editorial conferences and the lounges, as well as the colour schemes for the lobbies of the administration or editorial buildings.

In this case too, the color schemes became an important design element, bringing Panton's typical fusion to room design. All the designs were his: lamps, textiles and wall coverings, only the furniture had to be ordered from Knoll International according to their contracts. lighting of specially designed mirrors for walls and ceilings was of great importance.

While the pool area was destroyed shortly after by fire, and the entrance and lobby underwent a major redesign in the 90s, the cellar It has been preserved until now in its original version and today represents a unique and valuable historical document.

The commission to design the new headquarters of the Gruner & Jahr publishing house in Hamburg (1973) was as extensive as that of the Spiegel publishing house a few years earlier. While in the design of the offices Panton limited himself to a system simple colors and patterns, In the lobby and the canteen he again managed to use visual effects of trompe l'oeil to create impressive and surprising interior design solutions.

At the lobby (right photo) the mirrored ceiling from which they hung was striking VP Globe lamps apparently innumerable, and in the cellar (left photo), the carpet With its wavy design it gave the floor a three-dimensional appearance.

Although Panton never stopped working and won several design awards, he faded in popularity in the late 1980s. However, in the mid-1995s he experienced a renaissance, and in XNUMX the company was re-established as a fashion house. vogue magazine included on its cover Kate Moss sitting in a Panton chair.

In 1998, Verner Panton He died shortly before a Retrospective The extraordinarily extensive and diverse oeuvre of Verner Panton, to which the Vitra Design Museum devoted a large amount of time, was planned for the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding, in which he himself had participated. Retrospective  in 2000, it is now rightly considered a major contribution to the development of design in the second half of the XNUMXth century.

Photos: Verner Panton Official Site y Vitra