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Jørn's chair for MOMA II
Jørn's chair for MOMA II
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Jørn Utzon and Arne Kosmo. Drawing of chair for competition printed by MOMA in 1948.
Want the full story? It comes here.
Arne Kosmo was a Norwegian architect and one of Jørn Utzon's best friends. They met in Stockholm in 1943.
It was in the middle of the Second World War, but the Swedish capital was open, so it became a gathering place for Nordic architects.
The chair is a project that Jørn and Arne worked on together. It is for a competition that was run by the Museum of Modern Art in 1948. It was a big competition, where there were participants from all over the world.
Jørn Utzon has told how he and Arne became friends in Stockholm, and went for walks along the beach, collected stones and wrote poems.
Of course, they also discussed architecture. How architecture should be based on the landscape and the place and the importance of good craftsmanship. How the superfluous had to go. That we had to go back to the simple life.
You can also see those values in the chair. Because the inspiration comes from nature. The chair is like a leaf. Or perhaps as cells, stems or a skeleton.
It had to be built in prestressed wood and with canvas or leather. But it never made it into production. They didn't win the competition.
And that's no shame. The first places in the competition were taken by Donald R. Knorr, Georg Leowald and Ray and Charles Eames with contributions that have later developed into some of the great furniture classics of the 21st century.
