Probably the most innovative and avant-garde designer of his time, Rietveld’s furniture designs were ground-breaking both visually and from a production stand-point. Even 90 years later, his chairs look as fascinating as they did back in the 20s and 30s. Ninety-one years after Rietveld’s Beugelstoel chair was designed (and produced in 1930), Cassina pays tribute to the chair with a modified version that makes the chair a slight bit sleeker and lighter by using 15mm tubing instead of the original 18mm. It also boasts of “a more ergonomically correct line, conferred by the use of state-of-the-art 3D technology”. Made from two bent pipe structures with a simple molded plywood seat joining them, the Beugel Chair of 2018 pays homage to a designer whose vision was truly a century ahead (in his 130th birth year), and a chair that was arguably the first to use thin, bent metal as a structural base.
Designer: Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (Redesign by Cassina)
