Lingua Franca

Gebrüder Thonet Vienna’s N.200 lounge chair by Michael Anastassiades wins 2020 Red Dot Design Award.

From a hand-drawn doodle to a Red Dot Design Award reluctant engineer and designer Michael Anastassiades discusses his recent win with Belinda Aucott for more space.

Half Cypriot, half Greek, Michael Anasstadiades grew up with Thonet chairs as part of his design vernacular. He studied civil engineering when he left Cyprus and then completed a masters of design at the Royal College of Art in London. Now his days are filled with creative pursuits.

“I am always sketching. Wherever I am, I am sketching,” says Michael from his London studio. “You know if I am on a plane, at the airport, if I am on holiday, I am sketching. I cannot stop thinking.”

Technically proficient and deeply inspired by nature, this combination has proved a winning formula for product design during Michael's illustrious career. 

“I have always been running away from engineering but years later, looking back at a lot of my designs I can see the engineering is still there,” he says.

Today Michael’s creations for his own label and for important brands from Flos to GTV each carry “The Midas Touch”. The big challenge he describes when designing his winning lounge chair, was the questions of how to bring something really fresh to the Gebrüder Thonet Vienna tradition. 

“I came up with the idea of designing a low chair and of playing with the idea of kind of like a doodle on a piece of paper. It was drawn basically in one line, without taking my pen off the paper,” he says.

“It is a very playful design and it also suggests movement for some reason.  In some sort of strange way, even though it is not a rocking chair, it kind of suggests this with its rear legs, which are curved,” Michael says.

The N.200 came to life when it was commissioned by Gebrüder Thonet Vienna (GTV) to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the opening of the very first joinery workshop in Boppard, Austria in 1819.  Thonet not only invented and patented the steam bentwood chair we know as the N14 café chair, but they managed to flat pack and export it around the world.  In doing so the Austrian company broke ground for all future designers wanting to scale their designs for the global market. Now the lyrical incorporation of tradition defines the effortless beauty of N.200 by Michael Anastassiades which is fluid, light and generous.

The starting point for the design process was incredible, according to the designer.

“It was a very open brief. It didn’t even have to be a chair,” says Michael. “And these are usually the most successful briefs, because if the designer is given freedom to create, then they can let the technique lead them to a product.”

In this case the technique was the steam bent wood manufacturing process invented by Michael Thonet.

The resulting product is a success. It just took out the prestigious 2020 Red Dot Design Awards in Germany in the Home & Seating Category in late April and has led to a second collaboration with GTV soon to be released to the world.

Praised for its originality, the curved back leg base of the N.200 sweeps around like a porch rocker and elegantly connects through to the armrests. The seat and back rest made from stretched woven cane, rest elegantly on frame.

“It’s really comfortable to sit in. The beauty is with this chair and especially when you are dealing with the cane, is that it is so light. I wanted this lightness. I didn’t want a heavy seat. It is actually quite compact, but when you sit in it is actually very generous. So, it’s interesting the way it plays between those two boundaries,” Michael says. 

The Gebrüder Thonet Vienna N.200 lounge chair from Michael Anastassiades is available exclusively at SPACE.