Super Normal 
„Basel Chair“ 
Entwurf Design: Jasper Morrison, 
London, 2008 
Ausführung Execution: Vitra, 
Deutschland Germany, 2019; Buche, 
ASA Kunststoff Beech, ASA plastic; 
MAK H 4003/2019; Schenkung 
Donation Vitra GmbH 
Sessel Chair 118 
Entwurf Design: Sebastian Herkner, 
Deutschland Germany, 2018 
Ausführung Execution: Thonet 
Frankenberg, 2018; Buche, massiv 
und gebogen, Geflecht Beech, solid 
and bent, cane; Thonet Frankenberg 
fl 
In 2010 Naoto Fukasawa designed a simple 
solid wood chair for Thonet, whose seat, back- 
rest, and armrests are made of lacquered mold- 
ed plywood. The Japanese designer, who is 
considered a representative of so-called min 
imal design, wanted to decidedly “create some- 
thing [...] that is as iconic as the history of the 
Company.” 1 Astonishingly, the chair he designed 
reminds us more of Scandinavian furniture de 
sign of the 1950s and 1960s-for example the 
dignified seating furniture of the Danish Finn 
Juhl-than it does of traditional bentwood fur 
niture. Fukasawa was thus able to refer to a 
design that in the post-war period had become 
the epitome of “good form” and was charac- 
terized by restrained design, pragmatic sim- 
plicity, and the unity of form and function. At 
the same time, with his chair design he took 
up on the concept of the “supernormal," which 
he had defined in 2007 together with the 
British designer Jasper Morrison: In the exhi- 
bition Super Normal - Sensations of the Or- 
dinary the two designers had assembled 
everyday objects that were almost archety- 
pal in their ordinariness and normality. 2 Due 
to their simplicity reduced to the necessary, 
Fukasawa’s and Morrison’s own designs 
sometimes appear as archetypes, which in the 
Contemporary product landscape, of course, 
are well-designed objects. In this sense, the 
designer Sebastian Herkner recently designed 
a “supernormal” chair, called “Chair 118" for 
Thonet. 
1 Naoto Fukasawa, cited after: Thonet GmbH (ed.), Thonet Essence 
01, Frankenberg, no year, 89. 
2 First, the exhibition was shown in the Axis Gallery, Tokyo, betöre it 
travelled around the world, Cf. Jasper Morrison / Naoto Fukasawa, 
Super Normal - Sensations of the Ordinary, Zürich 2007. 
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