A Super Normal Stool
The Za stool by Naoto Fukasawa for Emeco (image: Choreo).
In the mid-2000s, the designers Naoto Fukusawa and Jasper Morrison began formulating their ideas around the notion of Super Normal – “a perfect summary of what design should be”.
A normal object like a paperclip or a Bic lighter, Fukasawa told Domus’s Fumiko Ito, is not showy or attention-stealing. “[These] things are those that have permeated daily life, things that we don’t find any element of design in,” he said. But normal, the pair explained, was too often being sacrificed on the altar of design. A Super Normal object would stand as a rebuttal to this, acting as an artificial form of “normal”. It was, Fukasawa explained, “a new design that takes the essence of something that everyone recognizes and perceives as normal. When people look at these things, their expectation of seeing something that has been designed is somewhat betrayed”.
These ideas likely played heavily on Fukasawa’s mind when he began a partnership with Emeco, the US manufacturer behind the 1006 Navy Chair (1944). While it’s hardly my place to declare it as such, the Navy Chair seems a good candidate for a Super Normal object. It was designed towards the end of the Second World War as a durable chair for use on US naval vessels, and produced out of recycled aluminium because steel was in short supply. It is, in the best possible way, a very normal-looking chair. “There are only a few iconic chairs that have existed for a long time, like Thonet, Eames, and a few Scandinavian chairs,” says Fukasawa. “And for America, Emeco was an icon: a symbol of American culture. It was one of the reasons I wanted to work with Emeco: to make a Super Normal chair.”
Intending to design a sibling to the 1006, Fukasawa alighted on the idea of a stool. “My initial thought was that a round aluminium stool already existed as part of the Navy chair family,” says Fukasawa, who subsequently learned that no such design had ever been created. “I was lucky to find that idea.” Spurred on, he created Za, a spun aluminium seat atop four Navy legs.
Za is a jolly button of a stool, but one executed with a rigour and simplicity that recalls the 1006. The Za’s legs are the same extrusion as the 1006’s, with the aluminium sourced from recycled cans. “In the beginning, I didn’t know the recycled aluminium was made out of cans,” says Fukasawa. “Now I feel that both products – the aluminium can and the stool – have things in common. When I hold the can, it is very light, and when I hold the Za stool, it is surprisingly light also. They share the same kind of feeling of using minimum material for maximum effect and strength.”
As Fukasawa himself found, it is somewhat surprising to learn that a stool like Za hasn’t been in the Emeco collection for years. Although new, it passes almost unnoticed because of a phantom familiarity. “Its distinctive ‘Emeconess’ makes it feel like a member of the original Emeco family from the 1940s,” notes the company’s CEO Gregg Buchbinder. Is this Super Normal? In this, I defer to Morrison, writing in 2006 about the principles of good design: “A certain lack of noticeability has become a requirement.”
Words Oli Stratford
Photographs Choreo
This article was originally published in Disegno #29. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.