Industrial Furniture

by Hackenschmidt, Sebastian; Kandeler-fritsch, Martina; Wagner, Monika

• ISBN13: 9783869842196
• ISBN10: 3869842199
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-30
• Publisher: Distributed Art Pub Inc

Summary

To this day, some of the furniture used in factories and other industrial facilities was made by the workers and mechanics themselves for particular purposes and activities, and adapted to highly specialized production processes.In their strict orientation towards functionality, these simple and utilitarian pieces of industrial furniture, which usually feature screwed together or welded iron plates, sheet metal, steel pipes and wooden boards, differ from the typical smooth, uniform aesthetics of contemporary designer furniture.Since the 1970s, industrial furniture has increasingly been used in private living quarters, particularly in the furnishing of lofts and big-city apartments.But even if this furniture has long been valued and collected by connoisseurs and will sometimes even fetch high prices, it so far represents a hitherto entirely neglected phenomenon of art and design history.This is the first catalogue devoted to this barely recognized phenomenon of design history and accompanies the exhibition at MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna, May October. 2011.English and German text.