Bubble Mania: Inflatable Furniture Is Blowing Up
Pieces that look like balloon art, techniques that make steel puff, and a new riff on blown glass. This is the kind of inflation we want to see.
Blowing Series chairs by Seungjin Yang
Though not a new concept, inflatable furniture is blowing up—and growing up. Once a cheap commodity associated with youth culture in the 1990s, today’s pieces have taken their place in design circles, popping up at installations, fairs, and galleries—and fueling Bubble Mania to new heights.
In April 2020, online magazine Sight Unseen declared inflatables as the latest design trend. Though it’s often difficult to pinpoint when a trend begins, something was in the air as early as 2013 when Korean designer Seungjin Yang began his Blowing Series (pictured above). Reminiscent of balloon art, the series, which continues today, features a collection of chairs and other items. Imagine if Jeff Koons made furniture (and crafted his own work). Yang constructs his pieces with actual rubber balloons before coating them in eight layers of epoxy resin for stability. These whimsical chairs have since found a place among design collectors, helping to usher in a more mature era for inflatable forms.
Today’s inflatables aren’t limited to seating. As Sight Unseen pointed out, they have been appearing more and more in design installations, another suggestion they have reached full maturity. Bubbles have been present in the work of Objects of Common Interest (Standing Stones, 2019), Studio Swine (Design Miami, 2019), ENESS (Sonic Light Bubble, 2017), and more.
But lest you think inflatables are limited to transparent and colorful plastics, think again. In 2008, Polish designer Oskar Zieta designed the Plopp stool for Danish furniture brand Hay. Made with two thin sheets of steel welded together, Plopp ushered in a new method of inflatable fabrication. The process, called “free inner-pressure deformation” (FiDU), uses pressurized air to inflate the flat metal structure into three dimensions. Developed by Zieta and his design lab Zieta Prozessdesign, FiDU technology has since been used to create everything from furniture to large-scale structures. Its potential crosses design disciplines, with potential uses in the fields of construction and wind energy.
And let’s not forget perhaps the oldest kinds of inflatables—blown glass. In 2012 Sebastian Herkner released his Bell table, which boasted an elongated base in colorful blown glass. Since this time, several additional tables have entered the market making the most of the material’s bubble-like transparency. Some designers, like Mathiew Lehanneur, are taking this approach to its ultimate, bubbly extreme, clustering the transparent orbs to make his Inverted Gravity pieces feel like they are floating away.
Next up, Bubble Mania gets curvy. Be sure to follow my Instagram for more bubbly inspiration as well as post alerts!
