HAL Chair by Jasper Morrison
Although we generally tend to touch up mid-century style designers here I’m also a big admirer of designers like Jasper Morrison, Naoto Fukasawa, Dieter Rams and other industrial designers who are a bit more current and that are still working today. Naoto for example has a tendency to keep things simplistic and stripped down, always concerned with the emotions that we attach to objects over the years and how things function with us in our daily lives. English designer Jasper Morrison has ideologies that run in line with this, hence them working together many times, and over the years has designed some unbelievable furniture and a creative body of work that any designer would be proud of. Jasper to me speaks as someone who doesn’t budge and likes to follow through with his own concepts, he rarely ever compromises, if it doesn’t feel right he won’t take part in it. Today I decided to pin-point one chair that we’ve not spoke about before called the HAL chair which was designed last year by Jasper himself when he partnered with the good folks at Vitra.
The Hal chair is a reinterpretation of the functional shell chair, specifically made with a couple of things in mind, one was for the plastic to be flexible, this means that many different seating positions are possible and facilitates dynamic, ergonomic seating. It was also meant to be made in multiple styles and colours without much of a problem in terms of production, Jasper achieved this by separating the legs from the seat meaning it’s almost interchangeable. All of these points are great but in my eyes what’s most brilliant is the fact that these chairs blur into any environment. For example here we can see the chairs situated in a kitchen, a classroom type environment, even an art gallery. It’s quite intriguing to see this range of movement and functionality.
Jasper Morrison’s concepts are quite intriguing and he’s always had a great sense of aesthetic and style. Oddly enough today we’ve just added a new 112 page book in our shop from Jasper titled “A World Without Words” which is basically a picture book full of inspiring imagery, this gives you a bite-size look into Jasper Morrison’s world. I hope you enjoy this “case study” photography from the Vitra design website, all relevant links are placed below if you want to find out more.