Knoll

To architect and sculptor Jonathan Muecke, material is elemental, repetition is clarity, and logic is freedom. In designing furniture for Knoll, Muecke applies the principles of his art practice to create a Lounge Chair that feels both raw and intentional with its primitive, rigorous, inviting form.

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, the face and end grain are both on view. “You can understand the piece of wood,” he says. “It’s not disguised. It’s there for you to understand again and again.” 

Muecke developed a distinct joinery system that repeats throughout the collection. Rounded dowels pass on adjacent planes, connected where they meet by a floating tenon.

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 them in terms of material—as markers of human scale, physical records 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,” he says.

Jonathan Muecke

From his Minneapolis studio, Jonathan Muecke (pronounced “mih-kee”) 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.

Learn more