Brutus by Bassam Fellows | THE PLAN
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Brutus

Brutus by Bassam Fellows | THE PLAN
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BassamFellows has participated in the project

Some of the most innovative, powerful design takes its strength from its sculptural elements. In certain cases it is a sense of fragility that offers impact – the tapered leg and lightness of Gio Ponti’s Superleggera, for instance. At other times it is the imposing, muscular heft of the object that strikes a chord: A strong sense of presence. There have been many influential pieces of design from the last 100 years that have come from a utilitarian place – often conceived as something that must be mass produced, and produced to last indefinitely. That doesn’t necessarily mean the entry-level carpentry of IKEA or Muji, or even the Artek 60 stool. When Pierre Jeanneret was creating the furniture for the planned city of Chandigarh in northern India in the 1950s, part of his brief was to provide chairs that could be made from locally sourced materials, and withstand the wear and tear inherent to busy government buildings, as well as intense humidity. The chairs he created, from teak and split cane, with scissor-shaped legs, have a bold and suitably institutional feel to them. Like wearing a heavy country brogue, there is little that is subtle about them, but that is where their beauty lies – they are solid, chunky and indeed… brutal.

Much of Charlotte Perriand’s work shares the same kind of beauty. The winter 2019 exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris – ‘Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World’ – flagged up pieces that shared spaces with both Jeanneret and his cousin Le Corbusier. The three individuals breathed the same air, and often worked towards the same goals. Certain objects – including the LC14 Tabouret Cabanon Chestnut from 1952, which is essentially a simple, easily transportable block to sit on –are attributed to all three of them. The LC14 is a Brutalist classic.

The new BassamFellows Brutus chair, launching in Milan in 2020, has its roots in the powerful Modernist vernacular of Perriand and Jeanneret, but is softer and visually lighter. It emphasizes certain sculptural elements, elevating visual aspects evident in much Brutalist design, but updated with an organic smoothness. It is more “cut” than it is “built”, and its shape looks like it has been weathered naturally and then manipulated – the silhouette of the back suggests a giant shell that has been machined to create a striking squared-off hole in the center. The back and seat look like a single sculptural element, the horizontal and vertical planes meeting with pleasing curves. The Vienna caning of the seat in some examples of the chair (others are upholstered with suspension webbing) draws a line back to 1950s Chandigarh, and contributes to the visual and physical lightness of the object. Like Jeanneret’s work in India, the Brutus chair is something strong and solid, but in this case perspective is everything – the legs are elliptical, tapering down from the seat to the floor, and shaped like a rounded shark’s fin, so they look broad from one angle, and remarkably thin from another. As with the BassamFellows Tractor Stool, the legs are inserted directly into the seat with a large tenon.

Remarkably, the idea for Brutus came from a dream that designer Craig Bassam had – he woke at 3am one morning and sketched out Brutus in significant detail. It came from something subconscious, and appeared fully realized on paper. It is a design shaped by instinct.

 

www.bassamfellows.com

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