Honey-Pop Armchair

Tokujin Yoshioka’s unfettered creativity was greatly nurtured by fashion designer Issey Miyake, who hired the young designer in 1988. His lack of specific fashion training left him free to experiment with unexpected materials. The designer’s “Honey-Pop Armchair” defies the notion of furniture as merely functional. Both sculptural and ethereal, the chair, made entirely of paper, plays upon the intangible idea of an object and the materiality of its being. Without an underlying frame, the chair is like an oversize, intricate work of origami, supported entirely by a complex of hexagons made out of 120 layers of paper glued together. The name “Honey-Pop” refers not only to its appearance as a giant honeycomb but also to the legacy of Pop Art, which championed commonplace yet unorthodox materials. The “Honey-Pop Armchair” debuted at the 2002 Milan International Furniture Fair. In assembly-line fashion, Yoshioka laid out a thick roll of the layered paper, cutting out seat shapes, which he opened up like a book to create the chair and reveal its seemingly insubstantial honeycomb structure. To show its tensile strength, Yoshioka sat on the chair, demonstrating how the weight of his body actually fixed the paper folds into place.
The name Honey-Pop refers not only to its appearance as a giant honeycomb but also to the legacy of Pop Art, which championed commonplace yet unorthodox materials. The Honey-Pop Armchair debuted at the 2002 Milan International Furniture Fair. In assembly-line fashion, Yoshioka laid out a thick roll of the layered paper, cutting out seat shapes, which he opened up like a book to create the chair and reveal its seemingly insubstantial honeycomb structure. To show its tensile strength, Yoshioka sat on the chair, demonstrating how the weight of his body actually fixed the paper folds into place.