Shiro Kuramata 'How High the Moon' Lounge Chair in Nickel-plated Steel Mesh

Shiro Kuramata for Vitra, 'How High the Moon' lounge chair, nickel-plated steel mesh, Switzerland, design 1986

Shiro Kuramata’s ‘How High the Moon’ lounge chair, designed in 1986, is one of the most poetic and recognizable objects of late twentieth-century design. Constructed entirely from nickel-plated expanded steel mesh, the chair transforms an ordinary industrial material into something remarkably delicate and seemingly weightless. Depending on the light, its shimmering surface can appear sharply defined or almost transparent, causing the contours of the chair to dissolve into its surroundings. The name “How High the Moon” refers to the famous American jazz standard. For Kuramata, the reference was particularly meaningful, reflecting his personal interest in jazz during postwar Japan.

Kuramata took the familiar form of the generously upholstered Western armchair, a type of furniture largely absent from traditional Japanese interiors, and stripped it of everything normally associated with comfort and solidity. Upholstery, padding and the conventional internal frame disappear. What remains is essentially the outline of an armchair: a clean, box-like volume articulated entirely in mesh. Remarkably, the material is not simply a decorative skin. The mesh itself forms the structure, allowing the chair to function without the substantial supporting framework its appearance seems to demand.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the work as a meditation on the very idea of the chair: by removing its visual mass and traditional construction, Kuramata questions how little physical substance is required before the recognizable archetype of an armchair begins to disappear.

Today, How High the Moon is represented in major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and The Museum of Modern Art.