I have always had a penchant for really unusual and distinctive furniture. In fact, my wife jokes that I always purchase items for style rather than functionality. At dinner parties she has an enormous amount of fun (at my expense) saying we have chairs you can’t sit on and clocks that don’t tell the time. However sometimes I think aesthetic pieces of art can truly enrich our lives. That is why many designers go to extreme lengths to create something really special. A great example is South Korean designer IL Hoon Roh.
Recently whilst doing research for another article I came across some really distinctive furniture designs by IL Hoon Roh. Primarily I thought they were 3D rendered visuals of concept products. Some of the pieces are so radical that I suspected they would never go into production. However, I was delighted to discover they have been manufactured (in very small numbers) for a range of discerning clients.
IL Hoon Roh began his career as an architect and then progressed into product design. One of my favourite pieces is the phenomenal Luno Chair from the Rami series. I really have never seen anything like this before. This piece of furniture is constructed from several stretched strands of carbon fiber, which has a truly organic appearance. I also suspect this experimental technique was very labor intensive and therefore each chair will be very expensive. Certainly with a limited production of 5 pieces they are highly exclusive and will only appeal to absolute modernistic design purists with deep pockets.
I am not sure if the Luno would be that comfortable to sit on or if that really matters. At the end of the day this chair looks absolutely awesome and is a piece of artwork in its own right. I also so think it would sit nicely alongside Peugeot Lab’s extraordinary Onyx sofa.
