When Serious Design Decides to Have Some Fun
Konstantin Grcic, Sam Son, and an object with a point of view
There is something wonderfully oversized about Sam Son.
The arms are enormous. The proportions are almost cartoonish. The chair looks less like something placed in a room and more like a character that has arrived in it.
And perhaps that is exactly the point.
Designed by Konstantin Grcic for Magis, Sam Son comes from one of the most influential industrial designers working today—a designer better known for rigor, experimentation and an intense curiosity about how objects are made and how people use them.
Grcic began not at a computer or drafting table, but as a cabinetmaker. He later studied design at London's Royal College of Art and established his own practice in 1991. His work now spans furniture, lighting, products, exhibitions and architecture, with designs held in the permanent collections of institutions including MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Die Neue Sammlung in Munich. Magis Design
His career includes objects that have become part of contemporary industrial-design history: the Mayday lamp for Flos, the radical Chair_One for Magis, the 360° Chair, and many others. Mayday received Italy's Compasso d'Oro in 2001; Grcic would receive the award twice more. Flos
Which makes Sam Son particularly fun.
A serious designer makes a very unserious chair
Sam Son exaggerates.
Its huge horseshoe-shaped back sweeps around the sitter, while the seat seems suspended inside it. Made from polyethylene and suitable for outdoor use, the chair turns an industrial material into something strangely friendly, almost animated. Magis Design
And then there is the name.
Sam Son.
It is difficult not to hear Samson—the biblical figure whose story is synonymous with extraordinary strength.
We don't know that Grcic intended the reference, so perhaps it's simply a coincidence.
But look at the chair.
Those enormous arms.
That physical bulk.
That almost muscular presence.
The association is irresistible.
And yet Sam Son doesn't communicate strength through aggression.
It uses strength to create an embrace.
That is what makes the chair more interesting than its joke.
Some rooms need a character
Furniture is usually asked to behave.
Sit here.
Put this there.
Support this.
Fill that corner.
But occasionally an object is allowed to do something else.
It can provoke a reaction.
It can change the atmosphere.
It can make someone smile.
It can become the thing people remember about a space.
Some rooms need another chair. Others need a character.
Sam Son belongs to the second category.
Imagine one in the quiet lobby of a contemporary museum. A pair sitting outside an art center. One unexpected yellow form in the courtyard of a restrained modern house. A cluster on the terrace of a boutique hotel. A chair sitting almost like sculpture in the home of an art collector.
The surrounding architecture doesn't need more decoration.
It needs one object with a point of view.
And perhaps that's the larger lesson of Sam Son.
A room doesn't have to take itself so seriously.
Neither, apparently, does great industrial design.
SAM SON
Konstantin Grcic for Magis
Low chair · Indoor / outdoor
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