"Just how does an object get into production?" With this issue we begin to examine the process of designing and producing an object by talking to emerging young talents about one of their recent projects. Our first subject, Von Robinson, talks about his Clarke chair, which saw its North American debut at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York earlier this May.

Last year, an Italian design magazine published a short article on my work and included a picture of the prototype of the chair. As a result of that article, the ICFF started using the silhouette of my chair as its icon for this year's fair.

ILPO, a factory in Bologna, Italy that works with Frighetto, needed a drawing, but luckily I had a prototype which speeded up the production schedule incredibly. We talked about changes to the prototype and we both agreed the chair had to be widened. It was the most difficult chair they ever had to make.

I took the advice of a few designers and people in the furni-ture industry who suggested I go to the Cologne Furniture Fair, which was held in January 2000. At Cologne, Pierre Luigi Frighetto, president of Frighetto, liked the Clarke chair and told me, "We'll make this chair, we'll debut it at ICFF, and we'll have a prototype ready by then." Later a sales representative from the company I met with upped the schedule and said they'd debut it in Milan.

The little paddles were difficult to design. I wanted to cut away everything you didn't need in order to get to a minimal surface that was sturdy yet flexible. I figured I'd leave the elbows free and see what happens. Now, one of my favorite parts about the chair is that the dangling elbows work really nicely.

It's named after the writer Arthur C. Clarke. I had to think about physics more with this chair than with my others. I looked at this chair as a bit of the space/time fabric, warped by the gravity of the user. Clarke has the ability to make cold physics fantastic and thrilling, to make sci-fi a rock-solid promise and sensual experience.

I started on the idea for this chair in my junior year and revised it a few times, rebuilding different templates, and prototyping it a total of three different times. To actually get the piece into a three-dimensional form, I made a fiberglass mold of the chair in my own backyard. I was trying to design a small intimate chair that held you like a glove, sort of like sitting in a cockpit.

Advice? I'd tell someone that if you don't have investment up front, then going to the Cologne Furniture Fair is a great idea. If there's a piece that you've prototyped, you've got a much better chance of getting it into production.

The most recent changes to the prototype are that we've made new legs for the chair, raised the height on the back, and set it upright.