Robin Day

Robin Day (1915 - 2010) is a major figure in post-war modern design in Britain.

A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London in 1938, his career as a furniture designer did not really begin until 1948, when he opened his studio with his wife Lucienne Day (née Conradi), a renowned textile designer. That same year, Robin Day was awarded First Prize in MoMA 'sInternational Competition for Low-cost Furniture Design with Clive Latimer for a series of storage units. This distinction contributed to a prestigious commission: the Royal Festival Hall seating in 1951, which enabled him to exhibit at the 9th Milan Triennial the same year.

He then designed furniture for the company S. Hille & Co, with whom he collaborated for some thirty years and who published, among other things, the 675 chair in moulded plywood (1952) and his flagship creation: the Polyprop chair (1963). This revolutionary model, originally designed as a stacking chair, was the first mass-produced injection-moulded polypropylene shell chair. Embodying Robin Day's approach to affordable design, the Polyprop chair has sold over ten million units worldwide since its launch and has become a design classic.

Robin Day subsequently received numerous commissions for public places and institutions: the Olympic Park stadium in Mexico City (1968), the Barbican Arts Centre in London (1981), an ambitious project on which he worked throughout the 1970s, and the London Underground seats (1991).

His work and some of his iconic pieces are still on display in the world's leading contemporary art and design museums, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.