Invisible Chair Fades to Clear Acrylic
At first it looks unbelievable – the heaviest and most solid part of a chair floating on nothing. Clear acrylic at the base of the legs fades slowly to wood-color paint toward the top of the structure, seat and back frame of this unique chair design.
Designed by Nendo, the Fadeout Chair is as much an artistic trick as it is a practical piece of home furniture. After all, while the initial experience is quite impressive the trick quickly becomes old hat – but their strategies and tactics persist in other works.
“The fadeout-chair’s legs seem to gently disappear, as though the chair stands in a pool of mist or fog. The chair’s back and seat are wooden, and the clear acrylic legs are specially painted by craftsmen so that the wood grain appears to gradually fade away. Usually, our perception of furniture is strongly affected by the space around it. The fadeout-chair turns this relationship on its head: we can change the look and feel of a space simply by placing the chair in it. This was our attempt to design space itself through furniture.”
Nonetheless, other works from Nendo prove equally amazing and likewise use illusion for more complex-yet-subtle pieces of everyday furniture. This chair, for example, looks far too thin to be completely wood – and it is. Yet by using rounded wooden elements with no seams it seems, it becomes hard to guess that there is a hidden metal frame inside of the narrow wood structure.
