ROULETTE

by Eero Aarnio

As Eero says, for all designers, the most common, interesting, and difficult object to design is a chair. Chairs for the home usually have four legs, stools have three, and office chairs have two or only one leg. Many plastic chairs don’t have legs at all instead the body of the chair becomes the leg as well. When Eero started designing a chair for VONDOM, he had this concept of the leg being a part of the body of the chair in mind, and he also wanted to see what new could be accomplished with a rotation mold technique in chair design. Because he has always been fond of rocking chairs and the round, rocking shape is easy to achieve with the rotation mold, he ended up with a design that rocks in all directions and also spins due to its contact with the ground at one point. The high armrests give a sense of security when spinning the chair around and also provide good support while sitting. He wanted to find an international name for the chair, which also would immediately give the association for the spinning movement, and that’s why he ended up with the name ”Roulette”.