Rover Car Chair

Ron AradWW-1981-132532

1981·Rover 2000 car seat mounted on a frame of Kee Klamp scaffolding, tubular steel frame, and vinyl upholstery·77.5 × 69.9 × 88.3 cm (30 1/2 × 27 1/2 × 34 3/4 in.)

<p>Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, a cluster of industrial designers, including London-based Ron Arad, hungry for experimentation and inhibited by the economic climate in Europe, began exploring new methods and approaches to design problems. One of Arad’s most significant early works, this chair is made from a Rover 2000 car seat mounted on a frame of Kee Klamp scaffolding originally designed in the 1930s. The design illustrates Arad’s preoccupation with experimentation and innovation, combining original and preexisting objects into inventive constructions with new uses in an effort to reawaken interest in these previously discarded materials and forms.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1981
Medium: Rover 2000 car seat mounted on a frame of Kee Klamp scaffolding, tubular steel frame, and vinyl upholstery
Dimensions: 77.5 × 69.9 × 88.3 cm (30 1/2 × 27 1/2 × 34 3/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Ron Arad

Artist

Ron Arad

Ron Arad is a British designer and sculptor who transforms industrial materials, particularly salvaged steel and aluminum, into functional and sculptural objects that challenge conventional distinctions between furniture, architecture, and art. Working since the 1980s, his practice combines engineering precision with an intuitive formal sensibility, producing cantilever chairs, curved walls, and monumental installations that exploit material properties and structural logic. His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Arad's pieces operate simultaneously as design objects and conceptual investigations into making, materiality, and spatial experience.

London, UK

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