zero.gravity: a mobile office by an.onymous
A sequence of spatial entities inscribed in a meandering interior and a circular exterior, ZERO.GRAVITY is modular chair designed by ANONYMOUS to offer mobile work solutions and extend work out of the typical office environment. The piece aims to encourage new forms of collaboration and interaction with and within the external environment to encourage productivity in new ways.
Drawing on the shapes, geometries and aesthetics of four classic modernist chairs, including Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand’s iconic LC4 chaise longue, the piece of furniture integrates four seating options encased in a rotating tube steel Ribbon. Users can sit in any of the four prescribed chairs by simply rolling the piece on the floor, or use the in-between areas to find their own comfort zones, adopt new positions, and adopt unwritten postures.
AN.ONYMOUS conceived ZERO.GRAVITY | all images courtesy of Knowlton School
a rotating mix of iconic modernist furniture
More than just a chair, ZERO.GRAVITY is a hybrid of four of modernism’s most iconic pieces of furniture drawn along an endless loop. AN.ONYMOUS integrates the classic minimalist features of tubular steel from Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair, Mies van der Rohe’s MR Chair, Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand’s LC4 Chaise Longue, and Herbert Everest and Henry Jennings’ first folding wheelchair. The seating positions are formed by continuous loops of steel tubing that crimp to form the contours that accommodate the human body, embedded in a larger looped tubing that forms the rotating boundary.
With no fixed orientation or position, the ever-moving object—a circuit of human habitation—finds stability and balance only when occupied. The human body is its center of gravity and completes the “emptiness” with its presence. “But to inhabit the piece you also have to tame it: a dynamic dance of the two in search of serenity. Movement is the prerequisite for rest and relaxation. The work of this intimate interplay is the force that animates the machine.” comments the AN.ONYMOUS team.
The human body is the essential component of ZERO.GRAVITY, which has long been conceived within the ideological and geometric constraints of architecture. From the Vitruvian Man, drawn in the idealized outlines of a circle and a square – reconciling the formal and functional orders of Renaissance humanism, to the Corbusian Modulor conceived from the standards of 20th-century modernism. “Here the divine circle has been reduced to a skeletal structure and the square to an intricate remnant of its modern past.”
