Jonathan Olivares

Olivares grew up in the metropolitan Boston area, and skateboarded as a teenager.[6] He attended Boston College and The New School,[6] before graduating with a Bachelor of Industrial Design (B.I.D.) from Pratt Institute in 2004.[7] While a student, Olivares interned at Maison Margiela in Paris, where he worked on objects and interiors.[8] He was an apprentice to the designer Stephen Burks, and in 2005 he also apprenticed for the industrial designer Konstantin Grcic in Munich.[6][9][10] In 2006 Olivares began practicing industrial design independently,[11] and his first office was in his mother's garage in Boston.[12] His design practice is now based in Los Angeles.[13]

In 2007 Olivares designed a multi-purpose cart called Smith for Danese Milano.[14][15] The form of the design is the result of a "balanced ecology" between multiple features; a container, a side-table or seat surface, handles, wheels, and a geometry that allows stacking.[16] The design "contains multitudes designed deliberately, a framework of potential" and requires its user to see "capacity instead of categories, in which a table could also be a seat, perhaps, if you chose to sit on it."[17] Made of sheet metal,[18] "its versatility cohabits with its simplicity of construction and the environmental friendliness that comes from using a single material."[19]

Between 2009 and 2012, Olivares developed the Aluminum Chair for Knoll,[20] a technically advanced, stacking outdoor chair made of a die cast aluminum seat shell and extruded aluminum legs.[21] The chair's seat shell is 3mm thick at its thinnest, “looks soft, despite its metallic nature,”[21] and its “gracefully contoured form is slim, making it shaped for comfort.”[22]

In 2015 Olivares designed the Aluminum Bench for Zahner, a customizable bench system made from architectural aluminum extrusions,[23] that are “normally rolled to create the underlying frameworks for curvaceous architectural claddings.”[24] The "extrusions are the bench's principle structural element, connecting its seating surface to its vertical cast legs,"[25] and "as the extrusions can be formed to any contour"[25] the bench can be "made in relation to specific architectural contexts."[25] In 2017 the Aluminum Bench was included in the Super Benches installation outside of Stockholm, curated by Felix Burrichter of Pin-Up Magazine.[26]

The Twill Weave Daybed, commissioned from Olivares by the Harvard Graduate School of Design for 9 Ash Street, was realized in 2017 with the support of Kvadrat.[27] The daybed is "predominately made of woven textile,"[28] and "the narrow carbon fiber legs and cross beams, are manufactured using mast-making mandrels."[6] The daybed is strong enough to support the weight of a car, "but its mass is formed from material that is, for all intents and purposes, a textile."[6] The carbon fiber structure and a wool cushion that is died the color of graphite, are both twill weaves.[11] This combination of materials results in a design that is simultaneously visually homogenous and celebrates the different materials used to make it.[11]

Olivares designed a retail store for the Mallorcan shoe brand Camper at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in 2019.[29] The store furniture is milled from Indiana limestone, which was a nod to the building's iconic facade made of the same material,[30] and the stockroom is replaced by archival sliding storage racks which sit in the open shop.[31]

His work has been described as “spare and formally rigorous, often concerned with high-tech manufacturing processes,”[32] and as carrying a “signature elegance and simplicity.”[33]

Design critic Alice Rawsthorn, writing in the International Herald Tribune about Olivares' book A Taxonomy of Office Chairs in 2011 observed: "You'll never look at an office chair in quite the same way again."[34]

• Graham Foundation, Research Grant, 2010[35]
• Compasso d’Oro, 2011[36]
• Graham Foundation, Exhibition Grant, 2011[37]
• GOOD Design Award, 2012[38]
• Metropolis Likes Award, 2012[39]

Olivares's work is held in the following museum collections:

• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago[1]
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles[40]
• Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

• Olivares, Jonathan. A Taxonomy of Office Chairs. London: Phaidon Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0714861036[41]
• Morrison, J., Olivares, J., Velardi, M. Source Material. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2015 ISBN 9783931936976[42]
• Olivares, Jonathan. Richard Sapper. London: Phaidon Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0714871202[43]
• Olivares, Jonathan. Jonathan Olivares Selected Works.[44] New York: PowerHouse Books, 2017. ISBN 978-1576878606[45]
• A Life in Chairs with Industrial Designer Don Chadwick. Interview Magazine, 2018[46]
• Olivares, Jonathan. Don Chadwick Photography 1961–2005. Barcelona: Apartamento Press, 2019. ISBN 978-84-09-11610-2[47]
• Georgacopoulos, A., Olivares, J. The ECAL Manual of Style: How to best teach design today? London: Phaidon Press, 2022. ISBN 9781838665173[48]

• Jonathan Olivares website
• Jonathan Olivares’ working environment (Vitra)
• Pin-Up Magazine review of the designer's book Selected Works
• Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, September 15, 2015[49]
• Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA) Biography