Materials and Form

I saw this project today, and I was fascinated by it. It’s called Not Granola, by Aaron Rappaport.

It’s a Panton Chair. But it’s made out of grass and clay. Does that fundamentally change the nature of the chair? I know that there are physical differences between clay and plastic, and the way they feel and move and function, but how else does it change the chair as an object? The Panton Chair was designed in the 1960’s, and it looks and feels like something from that era – something that abandoned traditional notions of how a chair should be, and it looks very fresh and exciting because of that.
With mud, straw, sand, and clay, that’s all different. It no longer comes off as refreshingly modern, but it feels like this strange, natural approach to modern design.