Productporn from the International Furniture Fair in Cologne is starting to hit the web, and Zanotta's reissue of the Liisi Mogenson Beckmann's 1966 Karelia chair is one of the first kid-friendly designs to turn up so far. Which is not the same as kid-targetted, obviously; these chairs, like ribbed Panton units ["for your pleasure!"} were originally intended for interiors of shagadelic Finnish futurehouse that never materialized, at least not enough to keep the Karelia in production for long.
But now that it's back, with a polyurethane foam frame and removable covers in a host of colors and fabrics--as well as both pelle and "eco-pelle"--you can retro out the living room and kidproof it at the same time. Or throw a few in his room, and when he's old enough to stack them, he can recreate that one Matthew Barney video where the tapdancing satyr crawls through that, um, tunnel.
The Karelia Chair by Zanotta is EUR--dammit, I hate the furniture industry's antiquated fixation with playing coy about their steep markups. The price'll get out there, why keep such a secret? [newsletter at zanotta.it]
IMM: Zanotta, with nice pics of stacks and much more IMM coverage [mocoloco.com]
