Boss Design and Wolfgang C.R. Mezger: making it count

‘“Why design another chair, Wolfgang?” they say. “We have 1000 chairs.”’ The eminent septuagenarian German designer Wolfgang C.R. Mezger is often asked, it seems, what need there is for yet another perch for our posteriors. And it’s not hard to see why the question might arise today, when waste is viewed as a massacrer of marine life and manufacturing a meteorological meddler. His answer is simple. ‘If I do the 1001st chair and it replaces 300 chairs, there will only be 701 chairs.’ The thing is, as every designer knows – and thank their lucky stars for – life changes, habits change, materials change, people change and there is always room for improvement when it comes to the design of furniture.  

Mezger, who over the years has authored chairs, sofas, storage and tables for the likes of Walter Knoll, Draenert and Brunner, is meeting with me from his intimate studio of four in Göppingen in Germany, to talk about Ola, a chair he first worked on for Boss Design four years ago in collaboration with the brand’s lead designer, Mark Barrell.

It has since grown into a family of seating with a shell made from recyclable polyurethane, that comes upholstered or bare with multiple leg and feet options in wood or metal, suitable for pulling up to a desk or dinner table and available in numerous thoroughly modern colour ways. This year it evolves into a new, more cocooning iteration, Ola Tub, with cupped sides that rise and curve to become armrests.

Ask him if it’s functionality that guided his design for Ola and Mezger will wave his hand dismissively. ‘That’s a given,’ he says. ‘What I bring is poetry and emotion.’ And what defines that poetic dimension? ‘Everything should be as simple as possible but not one bit simpler,’ he says, although this is, of course, Albert Einstein’s knotty wisdom he is quoting. ‘It’s so intelligent this saying. It’s contradictory but it says everything. With Ola, ergonomics weren’t the big deal – they were a matter of course. We tried to work the lines a little differently, but not too much. Look at the back, it’s not straight but slightly curved.’

The fine and subtle play of lines, thicknesses and depths might be barely perceptible hallmarks of the chair, but they are what make it. Barrell and his team had to work hard to realise the German designer’s exact wishes, and it doesn’t go unacknowledged. ‘Mark is very precise,’ says Mezger. ‘He understands my philosophy and tries enthusiastically to realise everything exactly how we discussed it.’ Together they have come up with a chair that exudes comfort and timeless appeal while modernising the tub chair’s proportions and profile.

But, I challenge, was there really no other chair already up to the job? Mezger refers me, unexpectedly, to the efforts of the Eames. ‘Look at the Eames chair beside Ola. I like the Eames chair very much, but the shell looks old. It’s not really timeless. Comfort and materials change with time – we are able to do things differently now.’ 

The tricky part of the design equation is squaring the knowledge that things are always changing with the current imperative that furniture should be made to last, and not be about to add to the waves of waste smothering our ecosystem. Longevity is, in fact, a simultaneous driving factor cited by the Ola’s design team, and certainly, there are refurbishing and updating options a-plenty in place to renew the chair’s life again and again.  

‘I want to make heirlooms,’ says Mezger, who claims he will carry on designing until he is 90, God-willing. ‘I don’t want to waste my time with fashion products – my time is limited, I want to make it count.’ I think there’s a fair chance that with Ola he has done his time justice, and made an icon for our times.

© Architonic

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