Door Chair
Design Date 1980
Designer Michael McCoy (b. 1944, American)
Media lacquered wood
Dimensions 31 3/4 x 22 x 18 inches
Michael McCoy is a Buena Vista, Colorado-based industrial designer who has created practical office furniture and airport seating systems as well as sparse, geometric pieces like this Door Chair. “I like the idea that designers can work on practical projects one day and vision projects that are meant to question or provoke the next,” McCoy said. “I call the vision projects ‘design fiction’ because, like science fiction, they are meant to help us see new possibilities.” The chair investigates the intersection of architecture and design by converting an architectural element (a door) into a chair. It is a folding chair; the opening of the slatted “door” folds out a stable seat and the chair collapses flat again for storage. McCoy and his wife Katherine McCoy were co-chairmen of the design department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1971 to 1994. Cranbrook is often called the cradle of modernism, where designers like Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia and Florence Knoll studied. Kirkland Museum’s chair is one of only ten made.
ON VIEW in Postmodern Gallery 8
Credit Line Collection Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Accession Number 2007.1096
