The late Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara is best known for his wonderfully ephemeral buildings, which were famously hard to decipher. James Steele, the author of Contemporary Japanese Architecture: Tracing the Next Generation, describes Shinohara as “a scientist who intuitively understood that the trajectory of contemporary architecture was becoming inexorably tied to that of global capitalism”. But, as these excellent 1980s seating designs attest, he was also a talented designer who understood the value of a cheeky anthropomorphic chair: a duality we much appreciate.
