- Source: Jonathan Olivares
Jonathan Olivares (born 1981) is an American industrial designer and author. Olivares's approach to design has been characterized research-based and incremental. In April 2022 he became Senior Vice-President of Design at the Knoll furniture company.
Early life and education
Olivares grew up in the metropolitan Boston area, and skateboarded as a teenager. He attended Boston College and The New School, before graduating with a Bachelor of Industrial Design (B.I.D.) from Pratt Institute in 2004. While a student, Olivares interned at Maison Margiela in Paris, where he worked on objects and interiors. He was an apprentice to the designer Stephen Burks, and in 2005 he also apprenticed for the industrial designer Konstantin Grcic in Munich. In 2006 Olivares began practicing industrial design independently, and his first office was in his mother's garage in Boston. His design practice is now based in Los Angeles.
Designs
Olivares' early furniture designs are explorations in various forms of metal. In 2007 Olivares designed Smith, a multi-purpose cart made of sheet metal, made by Danese Milano. Versatility, simplicity, and the use of a single, recyclable material deliver an environmentally friendly product. The design is the result of balanced functions; a container, a side-table or seat surface, handles, wheels, and a geometry that allows stacking. Writer and curator Su Wu states: "[Smith] has capacity instead of categories, in which a table could also be a seat, perhaps, if you chose to sit on it." Olivares 2012 Aluminum Chair for Knoll is a technically advanced chair made of die cast and extruded aluminum. The chair's seat shell is 3mm thick and has a shape that softens its metallic nature.” and its contoured shape is slim and comfortable. The Aluminum Bench, made by Zahner in 2015, is made from architectural aluminum extrusions, that are normally used to support curved metal building facades. The extrusions provide the main structure, joining the seat plate and cast legs, and are rolled formed to any curvature. In 2017 the Aluminum Bench was included in the Super Benches installation outside of Stockholm, curated by Felix Burrichter of Pin-Up Magazine.
Olivares has worked on commercial and corporate interiors, for Vitra, Dropbox, and in 2019 he designed a retail store for the Mallorcan shoe brand Camper at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The store furniture is milled from Indiana limestone, a nod to the building's iconic facade made of the same material, and the stock is housed in openly in sliding storage racks.
In 2016 Olivares turned his attention to textiles. Twill Weave Daybed, commissioned from Olivares by the Harvard Graduate School of Design for 9 Ash Street, was realized in 2017 with the support of Kvadrat. The daybed is composed of twill weave textiles, with its legs and cross beams made of woven carbon fiber, molded on mast-making mandrels, and its wool cushion dyed the color of graphite. The daybed is strong enough to support the weight of a car. This combination of materials results in a design that is simultaneously visually homogenous and celebrates the different materials used to make it. In 2022 Kvadrat's New York flagship showroom, designed by Olivares, opened. Based on the square unit of a woven textile, the showroom is square in plan with a catwalk that allows bolts of textiles to be hung from it. Square Chair, produced by the Italian manufacturer Moroso, was designed for the showroom and extends the spatial concept down to the scale of furniture. The chair is made of two square foam blocks, upholstered with textile, that allow the user to sit forwards, sideways, and backwards. With each block being upholstered in a different textile, the chair is a vehicle for larger compositions of color in space.
Reception
Interior Design magazine describes Olivares work in a 2018 article as “spare and formally rigorous, often concerned with high-tech manufacturing processes.” The art and cultural critic Drew Zeiba describes Olivares works as carrying a “signature elegance and simplicity.” Writing in the International Herald Tribune about Olivares' book A Taxonomy of Office Chairs in 2011, Design critic Alice Rawsthorn writes: "You'll never look at an office chair in quite the same way again."
Grants and awards
Graham Foundation, Research Grant, 2010
Compasso d’Oro, 2011
Graham Foundation, Exhibition Grant, 2011
GOOD Design Award, 2012
Metropolis Likes Award, 2012
Collections
Olivares's work is held in the following museum collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
ADI Design Museum, Milan
Publications
Olivares, Jonathan. A Taxonomy of Office Chairs. London: Phaidon Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0714861036
Morrison, J., Olivares, J., Velardi, M. Source Material. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2015 ISBN 9783931936976
Olivares, Jonathan. Richard Sapper. London: Phaidon Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0714871202
Olivares, Jonathan. Jonathan Olivares Selected Works. New York: PowerHouse Books, 2017. ISBN 978-1576878606
A Life in Chairs with Industrial Designer Don Chadwick. Interview Magazine, 2018
Olivares, Jonathan. Don Chadwick Photography 1961–2005. Barcelona: Apartamento Press, 2019. ISBN 978-84-09-11610-2
Georgacopoulos, A., Olivares, J. The ECAL Manual of Style: How to best teach design today? London: Phaidon Press, 2022. ISBN 9781838665173
Olivares, Jonathan (2024). Skateboard. London: Phaidon. p. 240. ISBN 978-1838667498.
References
External links
Jonathan Olivares website
Jonathan Olivares’ working environment (Vitra)
Pin-Up Magazine review of the designer's book Selected Works
Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, September 15, 2015
Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA) Biography
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