Olivier Mourgue, Designer of Kubrick's Djinn Chairs, Dies at 87

Olivier Mourgue, the French designer whose red Djinn chairs furnished the space-station Hilton in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey," died on Oct. 5 at his home in Plouguiel, France. He was 87. His son Armel confirmed the death.

Mourgue was 25 when Airborne, a French manufacturer, produced the first piece of the Djinn collection, a chaise longue, in 1964. A lounge chair, ottoman and love seat followed in 1965. Tubular steel frames, encased in polyurethane and sheathed in bright wool-jersey covers, gave the furniture the look of life-size pop art — furniture analogues of Gumby and Pokey, the flexible clay action figures.

An Airborne publicist named the low-slung collection after shape-shifting genies, perhaps because each piece's undulating ribbon suggested a flying carpet. "Personally, I have always enjoyed living close to the floor," Mourgue told Le Monde in 2021.

How did Kubrick find the chairs?

Kubrick spotted the Djinn line in the British lifestyle magazine Queen and approached Mourgue about decorating the lobby of the fictional Hilton hotel in "2001." The antiseptic interiors set off the chairs' candy colors to lasting effect.

It wasn't Djinn's first screen credit. In 1967, a candy-pink Djinn chaise appeared in the bedroom of Ursula Andress's spy temptress in the James Bond spoof "Casino Royale." Peter Sellers, playing one of her assets, uses it as a bench for postcoital calisthenics.

Djinn made Mourgue a design star in what he called "a stimulating, colorful era." His 1968 Bouloum lounge, a stackable polyester-resin chair for Airborne, resembled a seated armless figure doing sit-ups. It appeared in the French pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka alongside his Flower lamp, designed in 1967 and still produced by its original manufacturer, Disderot. Earlier, he had created the Montreal — a puff pastry of a chair on a slim curved base with a dimpled ottoman — for the French pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal.

Who backed his work?

Mobilier National, a centuries-old organization subsidizing contemporary French design, supported Mourgue's work. He also prioritized affordability. In 1968 the Paris variety store Prisunic launched a catalog initiative selling high-quality, low-cost products by designers including Terence Conran and Gae Aulenti. Mourgue contributed a 1969 hardboard furniture suite with a coordinating floor cushion, the Carpet-Seat; the actress Jeanne Moreau was an early adopter.

In 1971 the German biotechnology company Bayer commissioned him to design Visiona 3, a 1,238-square-foot living space presented at the Cologne furniture fair to showcase synthetic textiles. Joe Colombo and Verner Panton had designed the two previous Visiona exhibitions. Mourgue, a camping enthusiast, built a campground within the home: carpets simulating fields and rivers, flexible zones for cooking, games and rest.

He also loved mobility. After opening his studio in 1966, he worked with Renault on a less expensive Renault 4, designing accessories and interiors. He converted vehicles into studios on wheels: a Land Rover in 1970, Renault's Saviem TP3 truck in 1976, a Volkswagen Transporter in 1986.

Why did he quit at the top?

In 1976, at the height of his fame, Mourgue withdrew, moving his family to an old stone farmhouse in Plouguiel, on Brittany's northern coast. "He got so tired by all the star culture in design, which had just started at this time," Juhani Pallasmaa, a Finnish architect and lifelong friend, said in an interview. "He didn't like that at all."

Olivier Jean Pierre Mourgue was born on April 15, 1939, in Paris; his father owned an art supply store, his mother was a physical therapist. After the German invasion, the family retreated to the countryside through the Nazi occupation. He studied interior design at the École Boulle from 1954, then furniture design at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. His first collaboration with Airborne founder Charles Bernard, the stainless-steel-and-leather Joker chair, appeared in 1959; Airborne also made his Whist chair (1964) and Cubique chair (1968).

He taught at the Arts Décoratifs school from 1969 to 1972 and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Brest from 1989 to 2002. Later he built surreal miniature theaters and gardens from balsa wood, canvas and watercolors; several were published as "Olivier Mourgue's Little Theatre of Design" in Pentagram Papers 12 (1984) and exhibited at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich in 1992.

Pallasmaa recalled a designer out of step with his era's industrial seriousness: "Most designers at that time were highly technical and industrial, while Olivier always had a playfulness." His chairs were like "funny animals — tame animals," he added, "which in those days was quite unique."

Mourgue is survived by his wife, Anne Turlan, whom he married in 1981; sons Armel and Gaetan; daughter Maria Mourgue-Aliaj; sons Thomas and Mikael from his first marriage, to Christina Sanders; 11 grandchildren; and his brother Jérôme. His brother Pascal, a sculptor who designed furniture for Ligne Roset and Knoll, died in 2014.

The Djinn chairs remain in production history's front row, still screening nightly in "2001" — a fitting immortality for a man who preferred the floor.