Architects in Michigan | Watching You Get Better?
If you know anything about architecture, you may have heard these names before: Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Zaha Hadid. One thing they all have in common Architects in Michigan? They have all designed furniture. You might think it strange that architects should be designing furniture when their main occupation is designing buildings, but it is actually quite common for an architect to design furniture as well.
Le Corbusier, well known modernist, designed many pieces of furniture, including chairs, sofas, a chaise lounge, and tables. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also designed chairs, sofas, tables, chaises, and stools. Frank Lloyd Wright designed numerous chairs and tables. Frank GehryÕs furniture designs are as funky as his architectural designs. The Eames are perhaps the most well known for their furniture designs, since they designed so many. One might not even realize they have sat in one of their designs in a school, church, or government building. I remember being a child in Sunday school at church with these colorful mismatched chairs, and it was not until years later that I realized they were in the style of EamesÕ!
So why do architects design furniture? One might think it is because they want to experiment with different techniques or materials on a smaller scale before they incorporate those ideas into a building design. Others think that is not the case at all, and instead explain that architects, including architects in Michigan, think holistically when they design buildings, meaning they are not thinking of only the exterior envelope of the building, but also the interior. And by that I do not only mean the interior walls, doors, and cabinetry, but the interior finishes such as flooring, wall covering, and fixtures, and yes, even furniture. It is less common today than in decades past, but built in furniture is designed by the architect to function in a particular space for a particular client or owner. In my house, I have built in cabinetry and shelving, and it not only is functional for storage, but also makes a good use of space. A lot of people think architects in Michigan only design plain boxes to live in, but the process is much more in depth than that. When clients hire architects in Michigan to design them a house or office or other commercial building, they should learn to trust them to design more than just the walls, doors, and windows of the building. This leads me to the next reason why architects design furniture: they want to emphasize their relevance and competence in designing in a more obvious way. Many people go through their day unaware of the buildings they inhabit, but they might be more aware of the chair they sit in, or the table they use to eat dinner, or the side table holding their family photos.
Frank Lloyd Wright was known to create furniture for many of the homes he built. Some say he did this because he, like many architects, including architects in Michigan, like to have total control of their designs, and like all artists, do not want anyone or anything to tarnish the image of their designs. One way of tarnishing the design would be to pick out furniture that does not meet the expectations of the architect, or furniture that does not match the rest of the house. So to avoid this, Frank Lloyd Wright designed furniture into the walls of his designs, and then further designed stand alone pieces. This also makes sense when you consider that Frank Lloyd Wright, like many other famous architects, were creating designs that were so different from other styles of other architects and developers; therefore, it would be difficult to even find furniture that would fit into his designs. Frank Lloyd Wright thought himself to be an artist who created masterpieces that deserved to be treated as such, and therefore only wanted the most precisely perfect furniture to fill them.
Architects in Michigan | Helping You Learn More?
When architects in Michigan design furniture for their buildings, their goal is to continue the design theme throughout the space. Often times when you are in someoneÕs home, the exterior of the house does not quite match the interior. Other times the exterior and interior structural elements go together, but the homeownerÕs furniture does not. Not that this is necessarily a ÔbadÕ thing, but in cases where you have a house built, and architects in Michigan take your style and functional tastes into consideration, as they should, it defeats the purpose to put a bunch of mismatched furniture inside. Obviously sometimes financial insufficiency is the cause, and that should not cause the homeowner to be ashamed, but if possible, it would be ideal if the style of the home matched the furniture it held within. Additionally, to be quite literal when talking about having the furniture match the buildingÕs structure, sometimes furniture is made using the materials as the rest of the house, even going so far as to use scraps left over from actually constructing the building. In that way, not only does the furniture match, but there is less waste on site. Perhaps this is a bigger reason to explain why furniture is created–because architects in Michigan are big proponents of eliminating unnecessary waste when possible.
Another possible reason why architects design furniture is that perhaps it is a different type of design challenge. Architects are first and foremost problem solvers, thinking of different ways to solve the problem of what to do with space. Architects use their problem solving skills to come up with solutions that not only answer that problem, but do it artfully. To keep themselves thinking and to avoid being stuck creatively, sometimes people need different methods or media to challenge themselves. Furniture is a great medium for this challenge because it still deals with structure, and still deals with a problem that requires a solution, but its scale is so much smaller and the way people interact with furniture is much more direct and intimate than a whole building.