Jørgen Rasmussen was born in Odense, Denmark in 1931. He was ultimately drawn to architecture for his profession. He enrolled in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and he graduated in 1955 with his degree in architecture. He opened a practice with his brother and in 1958, the first furniture design opportunity presented itself. Rassmussen was asked by Kettel & Villadsen to design a chair and explained, “Villadsen was the manager and he had problems with his back. In those days, there weren’t so many pieces of furniture that cared about that.”1 Kevi® was a contraction of the owners’ last names.
This first chair was minimalist in design, with molded plywood seat and back, intuitive and easy adjustments and among the most affordable work chairs on the market. It was a sales success from the beginning and remains in production to this day, with the addition of upholstered plastic seat and back being the most notable improvements.
While working on a chair design in 1965, he reexamined the design of the existing 2-wheel caster on a chair. The closely spaced wheels were fixed to each other. Rasmussen sketched a new design with the wheels spaced further apart and mounted on an axle so they could rotate independently.2 The new Rasmussen-designed caster sparked a revolution in office chair mobility and was widely adopted across the industry.
In 1967, Rasmussen designed a new office chair of cast aluminum with sloping 4-legged base, seat frame and back support.3 It was offered as a conventional secretarial chair and as an armchair. In 1970, Knoll acquired the rights to these chairs, matching stool and drafting stool as part of the Rasmussen No. 1900 series in its catalog.4 They remained in production through 1976.5
In 2022, Rasmussen gave an interview and said, “I think the secret of well-designed furniture is that a simple design perfectly meets the functional requirement. And, that you manage to use the materials optimally in terms of their properties. Design is a living art form.”6
1. “Design Classic: Kevi.” Interview with Jorgen Rasmussen. http://engelbrechts.com/, 2012.
2. Jonathan Olivares. A Taxonomy of Office Chairs. (New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2011), 194.
3. Olivares. 43.
4. Knoll International Furniture Price List 1973. 53-54.
5. “The Kevi Chair and Caster.” Knoll Online Archive: https://www.knoll.com/the-archive/. The Rassmussen chairs were not listed in the Furniture Price List Contract Residential 1977/78, only the casters as replacement parts.
6. Ute Laatz, “Who lives there? Home story & interview with Jorgen Rasmussen,” AW Architecture & Living, October 7, 2022. https://www.awmagazin.de/interior/wer-wohnt-denn-da-homestory-interview-joergen-rasmussen.