When the inspiration for the 40/4 Chair came to him that summer day, Rowland was working hard to make his own path. He’d arrived in New York City only a couple of years earlier, fresh from Cranbrook Academy of Art, eager and optimistic, or, as he later described it, “with no cash and a few ideas.” Chair design had intrigued him since he was a boy—he’d built his first one at age fourteen. Seating also held special personal importance for him because he had piloted B-17 bomber planes in World War II. During long missions, the seats in the planes gave him so much misery that he resolved to create comfortable seating if he made it out of the war alive.
Like countless designers before and after him, Rowland faced the extraordinary challenges inherent in chair design. A chair must stand up under proportionally many times greater stress than a bridge or building, but without the foundations in the ground to give it strength. As Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is frequently quoted, “The chair is a very difficult object. Everyone who has ever tried to make one knows that. There are endless possibilities and many problems—the chair has to be light, it has to be strong, it has to be comfortable. It is almost easier to build a skyscraper than a chair.”
Rowland was adamant that most chairs failed because they were poorly designed, did not conform to the shape and needs of the human body, or created fatigue and pain. “It’s easier to design 5,000 chairs that are different than to find five that really fulfill the two basic requirements of beauty and comfort,” he said, describing a large percentage of public seats as “instruments of torture” because they were designed for looks first and comfort afterward.
Rowland was committed to comfort, so he started with human anatomy rather than styling. With the help of his mother, Neva, he wrote to governments around the world, requesting data on body measurements. With this information, he created his own system for sizing products to fit the greatest number of people. He called it Maximum Order Dimensioning (MOD). Using MOD, he concluded that the ideal seat for the 40/4 would be 17 in (43 cm) from the ground and the same deep. He created slight contours in the chair seats and backs to enhance comfort and support. He also created “give,” so the sitter could shift and move naturally, using a strong but flexible base of thin metal for both seat and back. The metal was covered with a special vinyl coating for a non-metallic feeling.
Although a few stackable chairs existed at the time, none were compactly stackable and portable to the extent of the 40/4. The extreme space-saving qualities of Rowland’s chair set it apart from all others and introduced a new type of seating that could be set up and taken down quickly, then rolled on a dolly and stored in a remarkably small space. All kinds of environments—from huge venues to small gatherings—could be transformed with a minimum of time, effort, and storage.
Rowland worked on the design off and on for many years in a process of continuous refinement down to the smallest details. A slim frame, built with 7/16 in (1.1 cm) steel rod, emerged as key to the design. This narrow rod enabled the chair’s compact stackability, while also giving it strength and stability. From there, Rowland kept experimenting with measurements, various angles, and contours to perfect the chair’s overall comfort and function. This led to an increasing number of unique features. For example, he added a “ganging system” that allowed the chairs to be linked in a row that could be lifted, moved, and even stacked on another row without disconnecting. He attended to such small details as snap-on glides to protect floor surfaces. Later, he would say, “My goal was to create the most universal chair ever built with the least expenditure of materials and labor.”
Extracted from David Rowland: 40/4 Chair by Erwin Rowland with Laura Schenone, Phaidon, £96.95 (Phaidon.com)