I went on a month-long trip to Scandinavia the summer before last, mainly for a little Alvar Aalto pilgrimage to see his architecture and furniture in Finland. You can see a post I wrote on his studio in Tiilimaki, Helsinki here, as well as, a post on his house in Riihitie, Helsinki here. Now, furniture producer Artek are celebrating the 80th anniversary of Aalto’s three-legged Stool 60 by re-releasing the stool in two new colourful editions.
The simple, stackable wooden stools were created when Alvar Aalto repeatedly threw the prototype of his three-legged stool to the floor at the Korhonen furniture factory to test its sturdiness. He shouted excitedly: “We’ll make thousands of these one day!”. Aalto spent several years perfecting the curved, L-shaped legs of the stool in collaboration with the technical experts form the Korhonen furniture company. Little did he know that they would become a design classic and go on to sell millions of copies.
The new colourful stools released by Artek feature the hues Aalto used at the Paimio Sanatorium, a former tuberculosis sanatorium in Finland, designed from 1929 to 1932: including the yellow of the floors, the green of the walls, the turquoise of the handrails and walls, and the orange, white and black of the furniture.
German designer Mike Meiré has also designed a special edition of the Stool 60, seen below with each leg having its own colour. “I believe you should only change classics when people have become very familiar with them. Suddenly, they can rediscover something they already know. This kind of surprise creates a moment of newness,” says Meiré when talking about his thoughts behind the edition.
Images: Artek
