Jonathan Olivares

Jonathan Olivares (born 1981) is an American industrial designer and author. Olivares's approach to design has been characterized research-based and incremental. In April 2022 he became Senior Vice-President of Design at the Knoll furniture company.

Early life and education Olivares grew up in the metropolitan Boston area, and skateboarded as a teenager. He attended Boston College and The New School, While a student, Olivares interned at Maison Margiela in Paris, where he worked on objects and interiors. He was an apprentice to the designer Stephen Burks, and in 2005 he also apprenticed for the industrial designer Konstantin Grcic in Munich. In 2006 Olivares began practicing industrial design independently. His first office was in his mother's garage in Boston, after which his design practice was based in Los Angeles.

Work and career

Furniture and product design Olivares' early furniture designs are explorations in various forms of metal. In 2007 he designed Smith, a multi-purpose cart made of sheet metal for Danese Milano. Versatility, simplicity, and the use of a single, recyclable material deliver an environmentally friendly product. The design is the result of balanced functions; a container, a side-table or seat surface, handles, wheels, and a geometry that allows stacking. Writer and curator Su Wu states: "[Smith] has capacity instead of categories, in which a table could also be a seat, perhaps, if you chose to sit on it."

Olivares 2012 Aluminum Chair for Knoll is a technically advanced chair made of die cast and extruded aluminum. The chair's seat shell is 3mm thick and has a shape that softens its metallic nature” The chair was commissioned by Knoll's then design head Benjamin Pardo (Olivares's predecessor in the role), who remarked at the time about his protégé, "I work with people like Richard Sapper and Cini Boeri [...] Who am I investing in? Who do I want to make bets on for the future? It is very rare to meet a young designer who is articulate and intelligent."

The Aluminum Bench, made by Zahner in 2015, is made from architectural aluminum extrusions, that are normally used to support curved metal building facades. The extrusions provide the main structure, joining the seat plate and cast legs, and are rolled formed to any curvature. In 2017 the Aluminum Bench was included in the Super Benches installation outside of Stockholm, curated by Felix Burrichter of Pin-Up Magazine.

In 2016 Olivares turned his attention to textiles. The daybed is composed of twill weave textiles, with its legs and cross beams made of woven carbon fiber, molded on mast-making mandrels, and its wool cushion dyed the color of graphite. The store furniture is milled from Indiana limestone, a nod to the building's iconic façade made of the same material, and the stock is housed in openly in sliding storage racks.

In 2022 Kvadrat's New York flagship showroom, designed by Olivares, opened. Based on the square unit of a woven textile, the showroom is square in plan with a catwalk that allows bolts of textiles to be hung from it. Square Chair, produced by the Italian manufacturer Moroso, was designed for the showroom and extends the spatial concept down to the scale of furniture.

In 2025 Pernilla Ohrstedt, Salem van der Swaagh, and Olivares collaborated on the design of Knoll's showroom on Park Avenue in New York.

Writing and curation His book, , was published in 2011. Writing about the work in the International Herald Tribune, design critic Alice Rawsthorn remarked, "you'll never look at an office chair in quite the same way again." Benjamin Pardo, who as head of design at Knoll prior to Olivares commissioned the work that led to Taxonomy, wrote in the foreword that "this book is important because it covers ground that has never before been documented in a systematic way. The taxonomic approach provides neutral, independent information without judgements, aesthetic or otherwise."

He has also written books about Richard Sapper, skateboards, and the Swiss design school ECAL (with Alexis Georgacopoulos, the school's director).

In 2014 he co-curated (with Jasper Morrison and Marco Velardi) an exhibition called Source Material at the Vitra Design Museum.

Knoll design head In April 2022 he became Senior Vice-President of Design at the Knoll furniture company.

Reception Interior Design magazine describes Olivares work in a 2018 article as “spare and formally rigorous, often concerned with high-tech manufacturing processes.” The art and cultural critic Drew Zeiba describes Olivares works as carrying a “signature elegance and simplicity.”

Personal life Olivares is married to , a Los Angeles gallerist who is the daughter of businessman and philanthropist Robert Hoffman.

Grants and awards Graham Foundation, Research Grant, 2010 Compasso d’Oro, 2011 Graham Foundation, Exhibition Grant, 2011 GOOD Design Award, 2012 Metropolis Likes Award, 2012

Collections Olivares's work is held in the following museum collections:

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein ADI Design Museum, Milan

Publications

Morrison, J., Olivares, J., Velardi, M. Source Material. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2015 Olivares, Jonathan. Richard Sapper. London: Phaidon Press, 2016. Olivares, Jonathan. Jonathan Olivares Selected Works. New York: PowerHouse Books, 2017. A Life in Chairs with Industrial Designer Don Chadwick. Interview Magazine, 2018 Olivares, Jonathan. Don Chadwick Photography 1961–2005. Barcelona: Apartamento Press, 2019.