Design

Child’s Play with kinder MODERN at Pulse Miami

Chen Chen + Kai Williams’ <em>Fiberglass/Iron Child Chair</em> for kinder MODERN.
Chen Chen + Kai Williams’ Fiberglass/Iron Child Chair for kinder MODERN.

For this year’s Pulse Miami, kinder MODERN, the fine children’s furniture dealer has commissioned designers Chen Chen + Kai Williams to teach the kids a thing or two—about design history, that is.

Taking cues from mid-century design legends Charles and Ray Eames, the Brooklyn-based duo presents a suite of new fun-size tables and chairs molded from fiberglass, a signature material in the Eameses’ iconic body of work, along with a paper-based matter called homasote. “The materials in this project are not normally designed to be seen or touched,” the designers tell us, “but we turn what is normally a brittle plane of paper into blocky masses with the texture of felt.” The resulting forms also pay homage to the Bauhaus approach to line, plane and volume. The kiddies will never know they’re being schooled.