Robin Day

Robin Day studied at Buckinghamshire New University, Royal College of Art and John Hampden Grammar School. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with Royal Festival Hall, British Overseas Airways Corporation and Pye Ltd. Work by Robin Day is recorded in the collections of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Museum of Modern Art and Victoria and Albert Museum. Distinctions recorded are Officer of the Order of the British Empire and Royal Designer for Industry.

• Name — Robin Day OBE RDI FCSD • Born — 25 May 1915 • Birthplace — High Wycombe, England • Died — 9 November 2010 • Place of death — England • Known for — Polypropylene chair, Hille furniture, Royal Festival Hall seating • Alma Mater — High Wycombe School of Art • Education — Royal College of Art • Occupation — Furniture and Industrial designer • Spouse — Lucienne Day • Children — 1 • Website — Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation

Robin Day grew up in the furniture-making town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. High Wycombe Technical Institute, where he was a junior day student, had close links with the local furniture industry. Day progressed to High Wycombe School of Art in 1931 and then won a scholarship to study design at the Royal College of Art in 1934. On leaving the RCA in 1938, there were no suitable openings in the furniture industry, so he made architectural models and took a teaching post at Beckenham School of Art, where he developed a ground-breaking course in 3D design. Day met his future wife, Lucienne Conradi, in 1940 at a dance at the RCA, where she was studying printed textile design. They married in 1942, moving into a flat in Chelsea. In 1952 the couple moved to a house on Cheyne Walk, their home and joint studio for the next 50 years.

• Illustration — Jet exhibition, 1946 After the Second World War, Robin Day taught interior design at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster), where he met the architect Peter Moro (1911–1998). The two men formed a partnership in 1946 designing public information exhibitions, mainly for the Central Office of Information and other government organisations, on subjects such as jet engines and scientific instruments. Day continued designing exhibitions and trade stands until the early 1960s for clients such as the radio manufacturer EKCO and the industrial giant ICI. He also designed a series of recruitment posters for the Royal Air Force during 1948–9. Although the war had impeded Day's ambition to become a furniture designer, his fortunes changed in 1948 when he and Clive Latimer won First Prize in the Storage Section of the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design organised by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Their concept for a range of multi-purpose storage units fabricated from a tube of pre-formed moulded plywood was widely renowned. Although never mass-produced, a set of prototypes made by Heal & Son in 1949 demonstrated the principles behind the design. Supported on tubular aluminium legs, the cabinets were compact and flexible, with sliding doors, interchangeable shelf and drawer fittings and a writing desk with a drop-down flap. Day's success in the MOMA competition brought him to the attention of Rosamind Julius and her husband of the S. Hille & Co., a small London furniture firm branching out into modern design. The prize was also instrumental in securing a commission to design the seating for the Royal Festival Hall in 1951, a milestone of Day's career.

Robin Day's seat design for the Royal Festival Hall and his high-profile contributions to the Festival of Britain, held on the neighbouring site on London's South Bank, greatly enhanced his professional reputation. The brief for the Royal Festival Hall project required a wide range of furniture designs, including restaurant and foyer furniture, auditorium seating and orchestra chairs, each with specific functional requirements. Wanting to explore new manufacturing processes, Day co-opted materials and technology from the automotive industry for his concert hall seating, which was fabricated from pressed steel, supported by cast steel stanchions. This chair design is still in use today. The chairs he designed for the restaurant and foyer had sculptural moulded plywood seats with wing-like armrests and spindly black steel rod legs. Day was the first designer in Britain to exploit these materials in furniture. Day's ingenuity was also evident in the two open-plan living room / dining room settings he created for the Homes and Gardens Pavilion at the Festival of Britain. Designed to illustrate what could be achieved on different budgets, both rooms were equipped with his Royal Festival Hall chairs, along with newly designed storage units. The economy cabinets were in oak, while the luxury cabinets were made from veneered mahogany on a frame of square-section tubular steel. The Festival acted as a valuable platform for launching Robin Day's pared down 'Contemporary' aesthetic, which was also showcased at the Milan Triennale in 1951. Architects were particularly enthusiastic about his furniture as it fit well with the clean-lined, glass-walled modern buildings that were coming into fashion after the war, in the domestic sphere as well as the public and commercial domain.

Robin Day began designing for S. Hille & Co. – a small cabinet-making firm specialising mainly in high-quality reproduction furniture – in 1949. The company was run by Ray Hille (1900–1986), daughter of Salamon Hille, who had established the company in 1906. At Day's instigation, and with the support of Ray's daughter Rosamind Julius (1923–2010) and son-in-law Leslie Julius, who had recently joined the firm, the company underwent significant changes. Although Day was never formally employed by Hille, he became their chief designer in effect. For the next 20 years, he created most of Hille's designs. His primary aim was joining functionality and technology. The utilitarian Hillestak Chair (1951), a stacking chair with a beech plywood seat and a solid beech frame, was his first mass-produced design. His Hilleplan (1953) and Interplan Units (1955) was derived from the storage systems he created for the Festival of Britain. Both were modular, so that multiple units could be combined in coordinated groups. Day's post-war designs were more light and economical than previous chairs. His Reclining Chair (1952), for example, had a slim angular upholstered seat, floating wooden armrests and U-shaped steel rod legs. A minimalist frame was also adopted for the 675 Chair (1953), a dining chair with a slender floating moulded plywood seat back. In the Q Stak Chair (1954), Day's first one-piece moulded plywood shell chair, the number of components was reduced to the bare minimum in order to keep costs down. Robin Day continued to expand Hille's furniture collections throughout the 1950s, pioneering technical innovations such as frames made of flat bar steel or square-section tubular steel. Day advocated the usage of Pirelli rubber webbing, which he adopted as a replacement for traditional coil-sprung upholstery. He left it exposed as a decorative feature on several designs, including the Gatwick Chair (1958), created for Gatwick Airport, and a modular seating system called the Form Group (1960), one of several Design Centre Award winners.

• Illustration — Polypropylene side chairs, 1964 Robin Day is best known for his injection-moulded Polypropylene Chair, originally designed in 1963 for the firm of S. Hille & Co. and still in production today by its successor Hille Educational Products. • Illustration — Polypropylene seating at Mexico Olympics 1968 This represented a major breakthrough in furniture design and technology. Originally created as a stacking chair, it was adapted for a variety of applications, ranging from airports to sports stadiums. In 2009 it was selected by Royal Mail to appear on a postage stamp as one of eight designs in a 2009 series celebrating "British Design Classics". Approximately 64 million polyprop chairs had been manufactured as of 2019, with Hille having sold around 14 million of them.

• Illustration — E-series School chairs, 1971 Both the Polypropylene Chair and the Polypropylene Armchair (1967) were designed to accommodate a wide range of different bases. Day later created a range of lightweight polypropylene shell chairs for schools called Series E (1971), produced in five different sizes with an oval hole in the back. His Polo Chair (1975) with its distinctive drainage/ventilation holes was another important addition to the Polypropylene Chair family. Designed for outdoors as well as inside, the Polo Chair was widely used for stadium seating, a specialist field in which Day became increasingly involved. He also experimented with other plastics during the 1960s and 70s, as well as continuing to refine his furniture designs in wood and steel. Examples from 1973 can be seen in the nave seating at Clifton Cathedral, Bristol.

• Illustration — TV for Pye, 1965 Robin Day worked in a wide range of disciplines. Apart from Hille, his two principal industrial clients were the electronics firm Pye, for whom he designed radios and televisions from c.1948–1965, and the carpet manufacturer Woodward Grosvenor, for whom he created abstract designs for wilton carpets from c.1960–1966. Day continued to collaborate with leading architects on custom-designed furniture for new buildings. In 1964 he designed the oiled teak refectory tables and chairs for the main dining hall at Churchill College, Cambridge, designed by Richard Sheppard, Robson and Partners. His largest and most ambitious commission was the seating for the Barbican Arts Centre, designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, completed in 1981. This project, which occupied him throughout the 1970s, included auditorium seating for the theatre, concert hall and three cinemas, as well as café tables and chairs and long snaking sofas for the foyers.

• Illustration — Robin Day with model of John Lewis restaurant, 1973 Although Robin and Lucienne Day shared a studio, they mainly worked in their own spheres, apart from two occasions when they collaborated as joint design consultants to the John Lewis Partnership and BOAC. For the latter they designed interiors for the company's fleet of Super VC10 aircraft during the 1960s. Robin later developed a prototype refreshment tray and tableware for Concorde, although this was never produced. The Days' involvement were engaged with the John Lewis Partnership as joint design consultants for 25 years between 1962 and 1987. One of their main achievements at JLP was helping to develop a comprehensive new house style, covering needs from in-store signage and product packaging to company stationery and liveries for vans. Robin also designed the interiors of several Waitrose supermarkets and John Lewis department stores, notably Milton Keynes in 1979.

His wife Lucienne Day, née Conradi (1917–2010) was a renowned textile designer. The couple married in 1942 and had one daughter, Paula Day (born 1954).