Air-chair Magis

1984 was the year of the ladder called Step, a project by Andries and Hiroko van Onck. It was snubbed when it first came out, because the furniture store circuit was not a place for ladders; they were supposed to be sold in hardware stores. Then things went the way they did, and Step met with enormous success, especially in furniture stores. It was the first product to light Magis’ fire – with regards to design as well as cash flow. In twenty years a million of them have been produced. It is super-imitated, and by high-lineage companies, too.

1994 was the year of Bottle, Jasper Morrison’s first project for Magis, an object that gave lustre to Magis by our being awarded an enormous number of design prizes and earning a place in the permanent collections of many contemporary art museums, such as the MoMa of New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.

1994 was also the year of the Lyra stool by Design Group Italia. Lyra did not receive the Compasso D’Oro or any other design awards, nor did it become part of the permanent collection of any museums, but it passed the most stringent test of all with flying colours: sales proclaimed it Magis’ longest-lived bestseller.

1996 was the year of Stefano Giovannoni’s Bombo, an extraordinary commercial success of international dimensions, and still going strong. Today Bombo is an icon; it created a style. It is super-copied and super-imitated. But Bombo remains Bombo. Its copies are another story, a different chapter, and it is not a chapter about creativity and design.

2000 was the year of Air-Chair by Jasper Morrison, a technologically advanced product, and the first single-shell chair in the world to be conceived in air moulding. It will doubtlessly be one of tomorrow’s classics.

2001 was the year of Magis Dog House by Michael Young. A success. But not so much from a commercial point of view as from a media coverage point of view. The attention Magis Dog House received was overwhelming and came from all directions.

2003 was the year of Chair_One by Konstantin Grcic. A hugely innovative project. It is an example of modern use of die-cast aluminium. Its design is left more to the void than to the solid, resulting in the most product with the least material. Excellent critical and commercial acclaim.

2004 was the year of Me Too, a collection of objects and furniture for children between two and six years old. Me Too was conducted and managed by designers that think with the mind of a child.

2005 was the year of the Striped family by the Bouroullec brothers, in transparent polyamide, but it was the year also for Déjà-vu stool by Naoto Fukasawa, in polished die-cast aluminium. Both of the projects prove the constant research in different materials and shapes.

2006 Magis has presented twenty-one new products at the Milan Furniture Fair, perhaps the best annual harvest that Magis has ever reaped in its 30-year existence, concluding a three-year design cycle. Of these, the chair “First” by Stefano Giovannoni needs to be mentioned. Chair First’s name comes from it being the first example of a chair made by air moulding in which the emptying of the frame is not simply applied to the volumes with a small tubular section, but throughout the extensive and complex volumes of the chair and its backrest.

Abstract plastic dog for indoor and outdoor.

Stacking chair and armchair for indoor and outdoor..

Rocking chair for indoor and outdoor..