Happy Chair by Jan Schreiner

Young globe-trotting industrial and multimedia designer Jan Schreiner received the Grand Prix Award at the International Design-Debute 2008 Competition, the annual interior design event in Russia for his Purple Café. Schreiner’s concept for the Best Interior Design Concept was also featured in August 2009 in Better Interiors Indien. Born and raised in Russia, Schreiner then moved to the United States for a stint before settling in Berlin. All of this traveling might have affected his design sense—or maybe it’s just a good imagination.

His chair designs also deserve attention, and I have a particular fondness for the Happy Chair. Beginning with its jubilant name, Happy Chair immediately captures the type of joie de vivre that we’d all like to harness in our homes. A sculpted dollop of polymer, Happy Chair looks like it melted into its present form. With a wonderful depression for the seat and an undulating curve for the backrest, Schreiner’s chair also secrets a hole beneath the chair that gets a welcomed surprise of color. The pink, aqua, or lime translucent piece works in conjunction with the white molded material to create a playful juxtaposition: solid against lucent, color against achromatism, and convex against concave.

Like his Twist Chair, which used spirals of color against a black base, and conformed to the curvature of the human body, Happy Chair also offers a splash of bold color and a form-fitting shape. While some view the Happy Chair as derivative, reminiscent of Ron Arad and Brodie Neill, others will see it as a fresh take on a classic form.