“Knieschwimmer” Armchair, 1907

The architect and designer Adolf Loos (1870–1933) used an adapted version of this armchair, dubbed Knieschwimmer, for his own interiors from 1906. The original design for this chair is based on the Easy Chair created by William Birch in 1898. This model was issued and distributed by the London-based company Hampton & Sons from 1901. Loos, whose interior style was rooted in the Anglo-Saxon furniture tradition, repeatedly used established furniture shapes and reinterpreted only some of their facets. The underlying economic rationalization was that established furniture types require only slight adaptations to function in the context of modern interiors. The model’s telling name Knieschwimmer [“Knee Swimmer”] refers to the object’s characteristic horizontal structure and the original sensation produced by sitting in this chair. The design was executed by the traditional Viennese company Friedrich Otto Schmidt, with which Loos collaborated frequently.

MR, 2021