Knoll

To architect and sculptor Jonathan Muecke, material is elemental, repetition is clarity, and logic is freedom. In his first commercial collaboration with Knoll, Muecke applies the principles of his art practice to create an all-wood dining collection with the familiarity of a kitchen table and chairs. “I like to take things for what they are and not try to imagine what someone intended them to be,” explains Muecke. “Ultimately these are generous objects.”

Materiality and connection

Material comes first for every Jonathan Muecke project. For this collection he chose wood because it’s common and warm. "Plus, it has grain," he says. "We can think of this as material.”

By rounding solid wood into cylindrical dowels, Muecke erased distinctions between face and edge grain and put end grain on view.

To keep end grain exposed, the rounded wood pieces pass each other on nearby planes and connect where they meet by a floating tenon. The distinct joinery is repeated across the collection.

Animating space

Trained as an architect, Jonathan Muecke thinks more about spatial relationships than any individual object. “I don’t think about chairs and tables as objects,” he says. “I think about a chair in terms of material—as a marker of human scale, a physical record in relational space.

Whether he’s creating furniture or sculpture, Muecke seeks to identify and express the internal logic of his materials. It’s a process he finds generous and freeing. “Only when something has internal logic does it have a have a chance at external relationships with other things.

Jonathan Muecke

From his Minneapolis studio, Jonathan Muecke (pronounced “Mickey”) strips objects to their essential elements, nearly to the point of abstraction. Often using just one material—wood, aluminum, carbon fiber—his practice challenges the boundaries of art, architecture, and design. Trained as an architect, Muecke holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.