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After centuries of adoring Madonnas, bathing nymphs and rolling hills, the art world reached a turning point. Painters such as Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky became masters of two-dimensional planes crossed with intersecting lines. Flattened, ordered and unnatural, the simple grid “declared the modernity of modern art”, wrote art historian Rosalind Krauss. Now, furniture designers are adding another dimension with their own grid-like designs.
For their latest launch, Brooklyn-based duo Jean and Oliver Pelle created a three-sided chair in hardwood and a sumptuous mohair blend. Instead of solid panels, the sides of the Quadrat Armchair ($4,900) are reduced to grids of thin slats. “In three dimensions, when things overlap and different directions start to emerge, it’s really interesting how complex the grid becomes,” says Oliver. “The mind tries to break it apart and understand what it’s looking at.”
The couple met at architecture school, and because of their formal training, says Jean, they can’t help but view the world through a grid – “it’s just always there”. In the one-off Carrizo Picture Cabinet (POA), it becomes a window to her original pastel drawing of California’s Carrizo Plain, where the pair spent their first road trip. “It’s like a visual foil to the artwork,” she says.
London-based lighting designer Cristina Prandoni also exploits the grid’s transparency. Her Grid Wall Lamp (from £2,950) features perforated steel sheets which extend beyond the sides of its opaline glass body. “I thought it would be much more beautiful seen from the side and it would distribute the light in a more interesting way,” she says of the overlapping grilles. Available in raw steel or a red powder-coated finish, the lamp is inspired by the geometric creations of 20th-century design house Wiener Werkstätte.
To design outdoor furniture without imposing on an open courtyard, Belgian studio Muller Van Severen turned to stainless steel netting, producing structural but see-through seating. The curved mesh of the Wire S loungers (from €2,900) also creates interesting warped shadows which played nicely against the yellow brickwork of Villa Cavrois, the modernist mansion in Lille, where they were exhibited in 2020. The Wire C #1 cabinet (from €4,400), an extension to the collection, was recently installed at Paradis Apartment, a new design-led holiday let in Ostend. Danish brand Kalager also uses lattices of powder-coated steel, creating shelves and tables in a playful, pastel palette (from £46.90).
The wire furniture trend owes a lot to 20th-century designer Shiro Kuramata, whose How High The Moon armchair emulated a comfy club chair using a fine diamond-patterned mesh. “The biggest problem is gravity,” Kuramata once said, attempting to defy it with his diaphanous creations. Many of them are currently on display at Paris’s Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, alongside the Tunisian couturier’s gowns in lurex lace and viscose mesh.
“The funny thing is,” says designer Will Choui about his new steel mesh Per.for.(h)ated collection, “that these pieces look super-light and airy, but they’re going to weigh hundreds of pounds.” He notes that grids can add structure and strength in addition to visual appeal. So far, the range consists of a coffee table ($4,500), as well as an armchair and loveseat ($7,500 and $13,500), whose velvet upholstery hovers within the semi-transparent structure, an inverted pyramid base disappearing beneath them.
For Choui, grids symbolise learning – each grid is a new layer of knowledge, and the remaining gaps are the things he has left to discover. “But I just think they look sick too,” he adds. His 1979 collection is inspired by the brutalist architecture of the Sydney Masonic Centre, rendered in an acidic orange. At first, the colour was an homage to his hometown of Montreal – “this bright orange saturates the city, especially because of the huge traffic cones” – but then became a way for Choui to step out of his shell. In his 1979 table ($2,500) he added a smoked glass top, which subtly reveals the aluminium structure beneath it.
Grids have long been an essential tool for designers, forming the basis of great architecture and graphics. Massimo Vignelli, creator of the 1972 New York subway map, compared them to underwear: ever present but never to be exposed. Clearly, the furniture world disagrees. Here, grids are not only exposed but imposing, overlapping – and occasionally neon orange.
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