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.

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. 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, and his first office was in his mother's garage in Boston. His design practice is now based in Los Angeles.

In 2007 Olivares designed a multi-purpose cart called Smith for Danese Milano. The form of the design 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, a technically advanced, stacking outdoor chair made of a 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 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. The daybed is "predominately made of woven textile," and "the narrow 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 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 Mallorcan shoe brand Camper at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in 2019. The store furniture is milled from 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.

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.”

Design critic Alice Rawsthorn, writing in the International Herald Tribune about Olivares' book A Taxonomy of Office Chairs in 2011 observed: "You'll never look at an office chair in quite the same way again."

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

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

• Olivares, Jonathan. A Taxonomy of Office Chairs. London: Phaidon Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0714861036
• Morrison, J., Olivares, J., Velardi, M. Source Material. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2015 ISBN 9783931936976
• Olivares, Jonathan. Richard Sapper. London: Phaidon Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0714871202
• Olivares, Jonathan. Jonathan Olivares Selected Works. New York: PowerHouse Books, 2017. ISBN 978-1576878606
• A Life in Chairs with Industrial Designer Don Chadwick. Interview Magazine, 2018
• Olivares, Jonathan. Don Chadwick Photography 1961–2005. Barcelona: Apartamento Press, 2019. ISBN 978-84-09-11610-2
• Georgacopoulos, A., Olivares, J. The ECAL Manual of Style: How to best teach design today? London: Phaidon Press, 2022. ISBN 9781838665173