Viennese designer Philipp Aduatz recently completed his Ph.D. in Natural Sciences, but it doesn't take an advanced degree to see the strong sense of organic form that inspires and informs his work.

Aduatz will be presenting a couple of new chair designs at Tent London, at the Old Truman Brewery in East London from September 22–25: "Melting Chair," which "captures a transient transformation within a sculptural object," and the "Flower Chair," a further exploration of a theme that Aduatz has explored in the past.

Glass fiber-reinforced polymer with a silver coating and scratch resistant polyurethane lacquer

The "Melting chair" represents Aduatz's attempt to capture an otherwise ephemeral state of transition—"either as a solid chair melting away or as a solidification of a liquid melt"—when a material "seems utterly fragile and filled with fascinating possibilities at the same time."

The form itself was initially modeled in "modern 3D animation software" after "the solidification of fluids as well as the melting of solids."Through form studies with CNC milled polystyrene models and rapid prototyping, [Aduatz] ensured a perfect geometry. The final object is made out of a fiberglass reinforced polymer, a light and strong composite material that is very durable. The surface is coated with a special mirror coating for a metallic appearance. A special clear lacquer is used to protect the mirror coating from aging and makes the surface of the Melting Chair scratch resistant.

Yet the execution is ultimately too studied, lacking the flaws or asymmetry that might occur in a natural melting or freezing process. The chair is interesting more for its mercurial surface than its idealized form, which simply does seem as organic as the designer might claim. "Melting Chair" strikes me more as an object—a beautiful one, to be sure—in stasis than a dynamic tension between two discrete states.

The "Flower Chair" is rather less ambitious and more successful for it, not least for its origin as a spinoff (or offspring, perhaps) another one of his works: "Figuratively speaking, the Flower Chair is obtained by bending one side of the Singularity Table upwards. The logical result relating to the form is a chair.
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The form itself "focuses on the sensation of gravitational pull by a black hole." I can't say that I know what that's like, but I find the more abstracted form and concept more compelling than the immaculate chrome of the "Melting Chair": namesake aside, the "Flower Chair" has a sleek sci-fi aesthetic even as it alludes to musculature or even a piece of bubble gum.

The carbon fiber is visible beneath the transparent polymer layer.