LSA 220 Introduction to Landscape Architecture

Thomas Kelley Mistakes in Architecture

Ligiana Fonseca
September 16, 2014

Thomas Kelley, a professor at the University of Illinois, has developed artistic pieces that
require careful attention of observers, which makes his work at the same time unique, for its
originality; and related to some modern concepts, for the pieces are abstraction of ideas. In
general, the art pieces created by Kelley are related to the process of design, which involves
vision, drawing, and building, and he exploits what can be lost during the development. His
work called Wrong Chairs represents the main ideas that he wants to exploit with this
concept: a group of seven chairs primarily developed by Windsor, but intentionally not
correctly executed. Each chair contains some manufacturing mistakes that can go unnoticed
by observers if they do not pay close attention, and the authors intention is to highlight these
imperfections. The criticism is which mistakes are acceptable or not in the production of
objects. At the beginning, Kelley said that Architecture should communicate by itself, without
the need of words; however, his work proves that it is necessary to understand the chairs
background and the artists intention in order to appreciate the work entirely. There is a level
of abstraction that can be connected to modern concepts: many times, in order to understand
a modern piece of art, it is necessary to understand the artist intentions, and Kelleys work
seems very similar to abstract pieces of art in this sense; without knowing anything about
Windsors chair, it would not be possible to comprehend Kelleys piece entirely.