Symbol of Sixties Revolution

Aurelio Zanotta's legendary inflatable blow chair was sign of the changing times

Product design is not an overtly political medium these days, although when it comes to purchasing some designs they can certainly highlight a gulf between haves and have nots. But this situation carries less cultural resonance than in the 1960s, when the growing youth movement in the West made an impact on many areas of society, including ideas about consumerism. One of the iconic Italian designs of that period was the Blow chair, an inflatable plastic chair from four designers whose product reflected changing attitudes.
Aurelio Zanotta began a successful furniture manufacturing company in the mid 1960s by taking a chance on a disposable chair, so when Milan designers Jonathan De Pas, Donato D'Urbino and Paolo Lomazzi proposed their idea for a transparent blow-up chair, Zanotta was ready to listen. Inspired by the no-nonsense design of the common inflatable raft, the three design associates, with additional help from Carla Scolari, devised Blow chair, a see-through PVC plastic design which was lightweight, mobile and inexpensive. It became the world's first mass produced inflatable seating design. Perhaps even more importantly, Blow became a powerful example of pop design, a less strident affiliate of radical or anti-design, which had rejected functionalism in favour of organic and space race-inspired forms.
The oversized chair, introduced by Zanotta in 1967, appealed to youth for its immediately accessible design, but it was also a simultaneously direct hit to older generation values surrounding permanence and materialism. In its call for a more relaxed form of living, Blow had a kindred spirit in the Sacco, or bean bag, chair, which was introduced by Zanotta a year later. Sacco's distinctively malleable form was a brilliant combination of cotton PVC fabric filled with thousands of plastic pellets. Both chairs captured the zeitgeist of an era, when youth en masse rejected values of their parents and an event such as the respected Milan Triennale could be shut down by a student occupation.
The pop sensibilities of Blow and its contemporaries were endlessly copied. The symbolism behind its design was eventually diluted by a wider mainstream acceptance. For De Pas, D'Urbino and Lomazzi, the genius of their inflatable chair design led to years of successful collaboration with Zanotta. Their other better-known design, the baseball glove-shaped Joe chair for manufacturer Poltronova (an homage to New York Yankee great Joe DiMaggio), showed another side of the designers' whimsical approach to their work.
In its day, the Blow chair was not only physically mobile, but a symbol of a mobilization of generations, younger versus older. Today it is revered as an important part of the 20th century Italian design success story. The Blow chair occupies a rightful spot in the permanent collection of the Milan Triennale.

Publication Date: 2004-02-29
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3687