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The 4 Long Chair with continuous adjustment in Reinaldo Leandro and Patrick McGrath's Manhattan Home. jardan kelly armchair
In Le Corbusier’s 1923 manifesto Towards an Architecture, the Swiss-French architect called the home “a machine for living in.” But what did that mean for the furniture? Corbu, as his friends called him, addressed the issue with a series of sketches—nine ways of sitting—that he, alongside collaborators Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret, would use to inform a series of radical new furnishings debuted in 1929 at Paris’s Salon d’Automne.
The chaise in the London home of Charlie Jeffries.
One drawing, which depicted a woman stretched out in full recline, would inspire the 4 chaise longue à réglage continu or continuously adjustable lounge chair (you might know it as the LC4 but, recently, to honor all three creators, that naming convention has been changed). Looking at references that ranged from the mechanized Surrepos du Docteur Pascaud, a sort of primitive La-Z-Boy, to Thonet’s bentwood rocking chair, the trio set to work devising a seat that would allow its occupant to glide between positions—from fully upright to all the way back, legs elevated. After experimenting at length, they arrived at a base of a lacquered sheet metal—a type often used in airplanes—topped with a tubular steel sleigh and a slim cushion.
The piece, available from Cassina.
A chaise in green in a Parisian pied-à-terre by Hugo Toro.
Early versions, first produced in 1930 by Thonet Frères in France and then by Heidi Weber in the late ’50s, found their way into the homes of the Comte d’Ursel of Belgium and the American writer Henry Church. Cassina took over production in 1965, making the chaise (from $5,955) a cornerstone of its iMaestri Collection, launched in 1973. Since the beginning, the design mixed the industrial aesthetics of the Bauhaus with finer touches (pony skin, cowhide) that would not alienate their mostly bourgeois clients (the chaise started at 1,650 francs in 1930). That balance has given the design serious staying power, finding its way into interiors both minimalist and ornate. “It’s a piece of history,” says AD100 designer Hugo Toro, who recently placed one with grass green upholstery in a rather classical Parisian pied-à-terre. “And it continues to challenge us to reinvent our living spaces.” cassina.com
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