Donald "Don" T. Chadwick (born 1936) is an American

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...

er specializing in office seating.

Early life

He was born in Los Angeles and developed an interest in furniture making from his grandfather, a cabinetmaker. He studied design at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

Career

He worked for architect

Victor Gruen Victor David Gruen, born Viktor David Grünbaum
retrieved 25 February 2012 (July 18, 1903 – February 1 ...

, and in 1964 founded his own practice. As a young designer Chadwick gained recognition for his entries in the

Pasadena Art Museum The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds. Overview The Norton Simon collections ...

's California Design exhibitions. His 1968 prototype for cardboard furniture predates the easy edges cardboard furniture by

Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions. Gehry rose to prominence in th ...

. He has designed the Chadwick modular seating system (1974) and, in cooperation with

Bill Stumpf William Eugene Stumpf (March 1, 1936 – August 30, 2006) was an American furniture designer who helped design the Aeron, Embody and Ergon chairs for Herman Miller. It was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where Stumpf, working with sp ...

, the Equa 1 (1984) and the Aeron chair (1994), all for

Herman Miller MillerKnoll, Inc., doing business as Herman Miller, is an American company that produces office furniture, equipment, and home furnishings. Its best known designs include the Aeron chair, Noguchi table, Marshmallow sofa, Mirra chair, and t ...

. Among his recent designs is the Chadwick chair and Spark chair for

Knoll In geography, knoll is another term for a knowe or hillock, a small, low, round natural hill or mound. Knoll may also refer to: Places * Knoll Camp, site of an Iron Age hill fort Hampshire, England, United Kingdom * Knoll Lake, Leonard Canyon, ...

, and Ballo for Human Scale.

Publications

* Friedman, Mildred, Ed. ''A Serious Chair — Design Quarterly 126''. Minneapolis and Cambridge: The Walker Art Center and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984. * Olivares, Jonathan, Ed. ''Don Chadwick Photography 1961–2005''. Barcelona: Apartamento Publishing S.L., 2019 * Amy Auscherman, Sam Gawe, Leon Ransmeier, Eds. "Ergon Chairs 1976" in ''Herman Miller: A Way of Living''. London: Phaidon Press, 2019. 460–481

Early life

Career

Publications

References

Further reading