Jonathan Olivares

Jonathan Olivares (born 1981) is an American industrial designer, based in Los Angeles.
== Early Life ==
Olivares grew up in the metropolitan Boston area, and skateboarded as a teenager. He attended Boston College and The New School, before graduating with a Bachelor of Industrial Design (B.I.D) from Pratt Institute in 2004. While a student Olivares interned at Maison Margiela in Paris where he worked on objects and interiors, and in 2005 he apprenticed for the industrial designer Konstantin Grcic in Munich. In 2006 Olivares began practicing industrial design independently, and his first office was in his mother's garage in Boston.
== Design ==
Olivares is known for his research-based, incremental approach to design, and his work has been described as “spare and formally rigorous, often concerned with high-tech manufacturing processes,” and as carrying a “signature elegance and simplicity.”
In 2007 Olivares designed the multi-purpose cart Smith, for Danese Milano. The carts form 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. 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.” Made of sheet metal, “its versatility cohabits with its simplicity of construction and the environmental friendliness that comes from using a single material.”
Between 2009 and 2012, Olivares developed the Aluminum Chair for Knoll (company)|Knoll, a technically advanced, stacking outdoor chair made of a Die casting|die cast aluminum seat shell and extruded aluminum legs. The chair’s seat shell is 3mm thick at its thinnest, “looks soft, despite its metallic nature,” and its “gracefully contoured form is slim, making it shaped for comfort.”
In 2015 Olivares designed the Aluminum Bench for Zahner, a customizable bench system made from architectural aluminum Extrusion|extrusions, that are “normally rolled to create the underlying frameworks for curvaceous architectural claddings.” The "extrusions are the bench's principle structural element, connecting its seating surface to its vertical cast legs," and "as the extrusions can be formed to any contour" the bench can be "made in relation to specific architectural contexts." In 2017 the Aluminum Bench was included in the Super Benches installation outside of Stockholm, curated by Felix Burrichter of Pin-Up Magazine.
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 (company)|Kvadrat.Quito, Anne (June 2018). "At All Scales." Metropolis. p.26. The daybed is “predominately made of woven textile,” and “the narrow Carbon fibers|carbon fiber legs and cross beams, are manufactured using mast-making mandrels.” 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.” The carbon fiber structure and a wool cushion that is died the color of graphite, are both Twill|twill weaves. This combination of materials results in a design that is simultaneously visually homogenous and celebrates the different materials used to make it.
Olivares designed a retail store for the Mallorca|Mallorcan shoe brand Camper (company)|Camper at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in 2019. The store furniture is milled from Indiana Limestone|Indiana limestone, which was a nod to the building’s iconic facade made of the same material, and the stockroom is replaced by archival sliding storage racks which sit in the open shop.
== Grants and Awards ==
* Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts|Graham Foundation, Research Grant, 2010
* Compasso d'Oro|Compasso d’Oro, 2011
* Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts|Graham Foundation, Exhibition Grant, 2011
* Good Design Award (Chicago Athenaeum)|GOOD Design Award, 2012
== Collections ==
Olivares’s work is held in the following museum collections:
* Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
* Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
Category:1981 births
Category:Industrial designers
Category:American designers