Janus

In a single movement it transforms: folding into a stool or unfolding into a chair. Its back folds down onto the seat, leaving a small backrest. In its stool-like state, it can be stacked, albeit in small stacks, and not in your traditional vertically-aligned configuration, but sturdy nonetheless. The stacked stools have the appearance of a skeletal structure, sculptural in form. As of yet, the design is still in the prototype phase. It was introduced by its designer, Los-Angeles based Jang Yoon, at the Prototype: Design for Ideas for the Home exhibit at the Interior Design show in Toronto. Yoon is an industrial designer who works primarily in furniture design.

Janus is made of plastic. Yesterday's article on Shinobu Ito's Goen Armchair took a more extensive look at plastic as a design material. It highlighted the soft and fluid shape of the Ito’s armchair, made possible by the playfulness and malleability of the material. Fredericia's Stingray Rocker uses this material similarly to create its soft molded form. Janus takes a different approach, using plastic to produce a design that is clean and linear, with sharp edges, crisp corners and components that are flat and straight.  Rather than appearing soft and maleable, Janus is sharp and crisp, looking as if it could be built of a coated metal frame and thin metal sheets. It does have a playful quality, literally, in its ability to be transformed (not in its fluid form as with the others).  Between these three pieces, the potential of plastic as a design material is evident. It can be formed in any which way, producing an infinite number of shapes and sizes. 

There is a definite allure to plastic.  Between Jang Yoon’s prototype Janus and Ito’s Goten Chair, this seems to be an obvious fact.  As for getting the respect it deserves, I think it is well on its way.  The chair has been built in both red and black.  Stay tuned, and perhaps it will be on the market soon.

via Designboom