Beanbag to Bread

I had a very positive response to Tokujin Yoshioka’s furniture design work because I think that it embodies some of the aesthetics and ideals that I find important. In an earlier assignment when asked to address the subject of chairs while concentrating on functionality, I chose a beanbag chair. I thought that the bean bag chair represented simplicity and a return to basic necessary form very well, because it literally is nothing but form to support the user. It is just a large piece of fabric filled with some sort of conforming material that can mold to the necessary spatial and size requirements of any individual while still maintaining comfort. And it does it all very sparingly.
After researching into the beanbag chair, and then watching the video on Yoshioka (who was also listed on the page for this assignment), I decided that there was a very definite thread that could be followed connecting the two together. Yoshioka’s design for the PANE (bread) chair involves the use of fibers in ways that they would not typically be used. The chair starts out as basically a block of fibers that have some tensile and supportive strength that form a solid mass. It is then shaped by hand to the specific form and wrapped to maintain it. Next it is “cast” in a tube and heated to bring out a reaction in the fibers, making them more rigid and supportive. The finished form when pulled out of the tube after it has been “baked” is that of a spongy like tangle of fibers that has the ability to support a wait but really has no defined structure. I find this very consistent with the beanbag chair, not so much in form but in method and in the achievement of what is being attempted. In other words, I think that they both accomplish the same goals in different ways. While the beanbag chair has basically no form on its own but only achieves form when someone is sitting on it, the PANE chair always has a form but has no internal structure that is the same. In a microscopic view it is just as loose as the beanbag, and it is only through human involvement that it is made into something more. In this way I think that Yoshioka’s endeavors into furniture design are effective in making the PANE chair the next level for minimalist design through material exploration.