Olivares, a protégé of Konstantin Grcic, is well established as a designer (his Smith storage cart for Danese won the Compasso d'Oro in 2011) and a writer and researcher (his most recent book being A Taxonomy of Office Chairs, published last year by Phaidon Press). Combining his talents, The Outdoor Office presents research and design on the subject of outdoor work furniture for corporate, institutional or educational contexts, made possible by grants from The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The exhibition, as the accompanying text by Zoë Ryan, John H. Bryan Curator and Chair of Architecture and Design explains, "synthesizes the result of Olivares's findings, from inspirational images drawn from film, television, and existing offices and conceptual projects, to models he developed for new types of offices and furniture systems, which are inventive tools for studying and working in both public and private spaces".
The Outdoor Office is a very utopian idea, a very Modernist idea — in the early sense — of doing something that will benefit society, benefit health and show how enjoyable life on earth is!
The Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Wing
Chicago
Through 15 July 2012