Jasper Morrison has designed hundreds of products with a simple mission to make you feel good. In his favourite Berlin spot he explains why you can never have enough chairs.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s late afternoon and Jasper Morrison is picking at a slice of apple cake. From his spot in a leather booth in west Berlin\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Einstein Stammhaus he surveys the room, taking in the globe ceiling lamps and the warm beige walls. \u201cIt\u2019s all how it should be,\u201d he says. He particularly likes the dark-wood, slatted chairs, which he thinks are \u201cmildly humorous\u201d. Then again, \u201cmaybe it\u2019s just because I speak chair language\u201d.<\/p>\n
For the past 29 years this Viennese-style caf\u00e9 has been the acclaimed designer\u2019s hiding place in the city, ever since one of his exhibitions was held in the space upstairs. \u201cIt was one of the main events that kicked off my career,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Although he lives in London, Morrison follows projects abroad. He\u2019s in town for the opening of a major retrospective at the Bauhaus-Archiv but the German city isn\u2019t just another stopover: Berlin was home in the early 1980s when he studied at University of the Arts during a year abroad.<\/p>\n
Back then Morrison cut a different figure from the unflappable man today, dressed in a checked grey suit and sipping tea. He was a rebel at university, both in Berlin and London\u2019s Kingston Polytechnic, regularly arguing with his instructors. \u201cThe director wanted us all to follow the same method but my approach was very different,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce he said: \u2018One day you\u2019ll run out of ideas, Morrison.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That day hasn\u2019t arrived. More than three decades on Morrison has designed hundreds of products, including trams and cutlery. And, of course, a stack of chairs for firms such as Cappellini and Vitra. \u201cIt annoys me when people ask, \u2018Do we need more chairs?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThe chairs that I design today are superior in many ways. There is no comparison between one designed now and one designed in the 1980s.\u201d<\/p>\n
He might be one of the industry\u2019s most recognisable names but Morrison has consistently paid homage to the discreet. One of his earliest memories is being in a Scandi-style room with \u201cbare wooden floors, lots of light, clean lines \u2013 and really feeling physically good in that space\u201d, he says. \u201cWhen it came to finding something good to do in life, the mission was to recreate that atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
His aesthetic has stayed coherent, seemingly favouring the pared back, yet Morrison has never described himself as a minimalist. \u201cDesign is like cooking: too much of one thing knocks the balance off.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CV<\/p>\n
1959 Born in London
1985 Graduates with an MA from London\u2019s Royal College of Art
1988 Some New Item for the Home, Part I exhibition at Daadgalerie (then located above Caf\u00e9 Einstein Stammhaus)
2006 Publishes Super Normal with Naoto Fukasawa, a manifesto of their appreciation for anonymous product design
2008 Joins Petter Neby\u2019s electronics brand Punkt as creative director and later designs its anti-smartphone MP 01 mobile
2017 Berlin\u2019s Bauhaus-Archiv shows Jasper Morrison. Thingness, a retrospective of his work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jasper Morrison has designed hundreds of products with a simple mission to make you feel good. In his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,66916,190,66917,66918,66919],"class_list":["post-138720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-cappellini","tag-germany","tag-jasper-morrison","tag-product-design","tag-vitra"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117019218197676589","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}