GOT WOOD?

In 2010, Jonathan Olivares wrote one of the first articles published on Jonathan Muecke, attempting to demystify the hard-to-classify objects Muecke designed as a student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. To open the piece, Olivares described what he imagined to be the only similarity between a laundry hamper and Lake Michigan: they both embody the principle of containment. Muecke’s objects, Olivares wrote, invoke similarly large-scale concepts, describing them as “stripped of special-case functionality and references, and express only larger phenomena such as absorption, containment, conversion, filtration, and gravity.” These domestic objects are so abstracted that they function more as art pieces than as functional designs. Muecke views sculpture and design on the same level, “both in terms of how they engage or antagonize space and how we perceive it,” Olivares wrote 15 years ago in Abitare. Take the rock with holes from Muecke’s 2022 exhibition Objects in Sculpture, his first solo exhibition in a major museum, at the Art Institute of Chicago, or his TB (Textile Box) (2021, Volume Gallery) made from aluminum and nylon, whose fabric folds beneath carved-out circles. One could almost imagine it permanently installed on a playground, with little kids putting their hands in and out of the cutouts.

In 2022, Olivares became Senior Vice President of Design at Knoll. One of his first moves was to commission the Belgian architects Office KGDVS to reimagine the Knoll booth for the brand’s presence at the all-important Salone del Mobile in Milan. The brief: to design a modular house that could be reconfigured annually for the fair. When he first walked through the finished space and saw all the furniture in place, he realized something was missing — wood didn’t have a strong presence in Knoll’s modern portfolio. To change that, he turned to Muecke, an obvious choice for Olivares because of the designer’s deep engagement with material. Where most start with an idea and choose a material afterward, Muecke starts with the material itself. “If he’s working in wood, he’s really working in wood,” says Olivares. “He’s in the workshop, making prototypes, using the specific qualities of a material to their advantage. If he’s working in carbon fiber, he has a deep understanding of how carbon fiber is constructed.”

It’s Muecke’s first time collaborating with a manufacturer, learning the constraints of producing thousands of units rather than working solo in his Minneapolis studio. The result — the Muecke Wood Collection, which includes a side chair, armchair, and table — still feels unmistakably Muecke. “Jonathan wanted to reduce the number of decisions that went into the chair, and eliminate the hand of the designer as much as possible,” says Olivares, explaining how dowels, typically hidden, become the primary structural logic for Muecke’s collection. “The chair is made entirely of stacked dowels of the same diameter, joined in the simplest way possible, with each element positioned to best support the whole,” he adds. These rounded dowels intersect and connect through exposed tenon joints, repeating across each design — available in walnut, oak, or ebonized ash.

With the material speaking for itself and construction as the primary design logic, some might see echoes of Enzo Mari in the work. But Olivares rejects the comparison. “Jonathan knows about design history, but that’s not how he works,” says Olivares. “If you ask him, ‘Is there something Rietveld here?,’ he just looks confused. He doesn’t look at other designers.” Olivares says it’s rare for someone to participate so singularly in the contemporary legacy of Modernism the way Muecke does. “He’s really somebody who’s purely and only playing in his own sandbox,” Olivares says. “That’s Muecke — 500%.” With his Wood Collection, Muecke’s in-between objects are now placed within the hallowed lineage of one of the world’s most important design brands.