 | |
| Author | Jonathan Olivares |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Furniture design and manufacture |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Published | 2011 |
| Publisher | Phaidon Press |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | 978-0-7148-6103-6 |
| OCLC | 681495449 |
A Taxonomy of Office Chairs is a 2011 book by Jonathan Olivares. It is a scholarly work that applies the Linnaean methods normally associated with the scientific classification of biological taxa to furniture typologies. According to the Los Angeles Review of Books , it is "a serious attempt to visualize the evolutionary breakthroughs and mutations often taken for granted when considering the various industrialized objects that 'make up our predominant reality.'" [1]
The book, which includes over "130 of the most innovative [office] chairs", examines familiar models as well as lesser known examples dating from the mid-19th to the 21st century, was the result of a four-year research project initially commissioned by Benjamin Pardo, [2] Olivares's predecessor as design director of Knoll. [3] [4] [5] It was first published by Phaidon Press in May 2011. [6] Writing for the New York Times, the design critic Alice Rawsthorn notes that Olivares's "unusually thoughtful and rigorous" taxonomic method of approaching the subject "distinguishes his book from the usual run of image-heavy, fact-lite coffee table-crushing design tomes." She goes on to say, "You’ll never look at an office chair in quite the same way again." [5]
Ten years after the initial book, Olivares published a small companion work called A Taxonomy of Office Chairs: Outtakes, Scraps and Updates. [7] This corollary compendium looks at the research processes and techniques that were applied to making the original book, adds updated material relevant to developments of the intervening decade, as well as personal points of view that were not suitable in the context of the original work. In the author's words, the addendum is intended as "a subjective scrapbook that is more in line with how I look at things today." [7]
