Verner Panton

Verner Panton who was born in Denmark in 1926, made his name there, even before settling in Switzerland in the 1960s. Panton was a ruler of the fluid, futuristic style of the 1960s design. This is what led to the introduction of the Pop aesthetic to furniture and interiors.

During the mid-1950s, young European artists, travelled across the continent with old camper vans, one of which belonged to Verner Panton, who costumed his into a mobile studio. Every few months, he travelled across Europe and sold his work to manufactures and distributors. At those times, Denmark was known for its organic modernist designs, it was the centre of the contemporary design scene. However, Panton’s style was different from the naturalistic forms and soft materials which were the symbols of Danish modernism. His intentions were that he had to set apart from the rest in order for his work to be accepted.

When Panton was young, his dream was to become and artist. However the young Panton had little talent to be able to realize his desires. This however did not stop him from winning a spot at the technical college in Odense, in 1944. Denmark was then occupied by the Germans. During the end of World War II, he spent several months hiding after a store of weapons was found in his room. After completing his studies he moved to Copenhagen in 1947 as an architecture student.

There were several essential designers that era, and Panton was close with many. For instance it was Pøul Henningsen; a lighting designer, who had taught Panton at Copenhagen’s Royal Academy of Art. It was this contact that introduced Panton to product design.

Ant Chair

After graduation Panton worked for Arne Jacobsen who was another great influence. It was here when he assisted Jacobsen in the creation of the ant chair. Panton later claimed he had "learned more from him than anyone else". Behind the gentle elegance that Jacobsen illustrated in his work, there was an obsessive research in new materials and technologies which inspired Panton, and I think was a contribution to his own experimentation with materials.

Panton had also close relations with Hans Wegner. However these two differed from each other because while Wegner was famous for his skill to modernize classic Danish teak chairs, Panton was the one who was passionate about experiments relating to new materials including plastics. He was interested in creating effervescent colours in the geometric forms of Pop Art.

Cone Chair

It was not until the creation of the Cone Chair’s that introduced the break through with which Panton came into his own individual style. This chair’s design included a little padded metal shell in a shape of a cone which was placed pointing downwards and rested upon a cross-shaped metal base

Panton, after making a name as a visionary designer, was given license to experiment. It was him who developed the very first inflatable furniture. This was made out transparent plastic film. He also designed the "total environment" for the Astoria Hotel at Trondheim in Norway. Here the walls, floors and ceilings were covered in an Op Art-inspired pattern in deviations of the same colour.

Flying Chair

Panton moved to Cannes in 1962, however settled in Basel where he started a collaboration with Vitra. It was this company that launched the Flying chair, a piece of fantasy furniture.

It was his tense use of colour and bold exoerimental designs that set a new trend. The International Furniture Fair in Cologne became Panton’s stage, and soon Bayer, the German chemicals giant, hired him to showcase its original technologies.

Visiona 2

Panton Chair

The firm wanted to illustrate the flexibility of plastic, polyurethane foam and new synthetic fibres. And Panton replied by designing an impressive fantasy landscape entitled Visiona 2 for the 1970 Cologne fair. The real impression, however, was the Panton Chair in 1967, which was the first cantilevered chair, made from a single piece of plastic. This chair was smooth and sensual and it was the chair of the era. There were other before him who had experimented with a similar technically and aesthetically sophisticated concept, however it was Panton who was the first to realize it.

S Chair

In the years before this, Panton also designed the S Chair for Thonet. This was a plywood design that predicted the basic form of the Panton Chair. Panton was very effective in shaping flowing forms into stunning plastic creations, but this was not enough, he went a step further. The Visiona 2 installation was the first complete synthetic landscape, a futuristic environment that occurred one year after the Apollo moon landing. This space age obviously was and influence to the Visiona 2 creation.

Even though Panton won a number of awards during the 1970s, he slowly started to lose his place in the design scene, and now designs belonging to designers such as Alessandro Mendini’s started to be more striking than Panton’s faith in Pop and technology.

Bibliography:

Design Museum. Verner Panton. [Online] Available at: http://designmuseum.org/design/verner-panton [Accessed at 6th January]

Bernard Polster, Claudia Neumann, Markus Schuler  and Fredrick Leven, 2004. The AZ of Modern design