Iconic Chairs on Bimstore

A chair is one of the most immediate ways to demonstrate scale and use in an architectural model. It tells the viewer how a room might be occupied. It can show where people are expected to pause, gather, work or retreat.

Bimstore has created The Iconic Chair Collection, a set of 13 Revit chair families based on recognised twentieth-century furniture designs. The collection has been developed for designers who want accessible, characterful furniture content within their Revit projects. It also responds to how our community uses Bimstore. Seating and chairs are frequent search terms, which makes furniture a category we are continuing to build with care.

The collection includes work by Gerrit Rietveld, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Eileen Gray. It also includes designs by Arne Jacobsen, Verner Panton, Charles and Ray Eames, Poul M. Volther, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand. Each chair carries a specific design history. Each one also offers a useful object for early spatial studies, interior layouts and client presentations.

Rietveld’s Red and Blue Chair began as a study in timber planes and exposed joints. Its later use of primary colour connected the object to De Stijl, turning a chair into a clear exercise in modernist composition. His Zig-Zag Chair took reduction further. Four timber planes form the seat, back and support, removing the conventional distinction between legs and frame.

Breuer’s Wassily Chair, designed in 1925, brought tubular steel into domestic furniture. Its frame drew from the material logic of bicycle construction, while the leather straps reduced the club chair to a spare structural outline. Mies van der Rohe’s MR Chair and Brno Chair continued that interest in metal, weightlessness and the cantilever. The Brno Chair was designed for the Tugendhat House, where furniture formed part of the architectural commission rather than a separate layer added after completion.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House Chair works in a different register. Designed for the Hill House in Helensburgh, it is high-backed and narrow, with an almost architectural elevation. Its elongated frame gives the chair a strong vertical presence. In a room, it reads closer to a spatial marker than a conventional domestic seat.

The Grand Confort armchair, designed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, separates frame and cushion with unusual clarity. The steel structure holds the soft elements in place, making comfort visible as part of the construction. 

Eileen Gray’s Bibendum Chair also treats upholstery as form. Its curved padded sections gave the chair its name, drawn from the Michelin figure, and created a softer counterpoint to the stricter lines of early modern interiors.

Arne Jacobsen’s Swan Chair and Egg Chair were designed for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen in 1958. Both pieces were developed for a complete interior scheme, where furniture and architecture were conceived together. The Swan uses a continuous curved shell without straight lines. The Egg creates a more enclosed seat, offering privacy within a public hotel setting.

Verner Panton’s Panton Chair pushed furniture production into new technical territory. Its single-piece cantilevered form required years of testing before it could be manufactured successfully in plastic. Poul M. Volther’s Corona Chair also moved away from the expected outline of a lounge chair. Its separate upholstered elements form the seat and back with a distinctive sense of movement.

Charles and Ray Eames’ Lounge Chair and Ottoman took a familiar typology and refined it through material detail. Moulded plywood shells, leather upholstery and a low reclined posture gave the chair the comfort of a club chair with a lighter construction language.

For Revit users, the collection's value lies in its practicality as well as its fun. These chairs can be placed directly into a model, helping designers test room layouts and interior proportions without having to build placeholder geometry from scratch. They also give presentation models a more evident sense of occupation while design decisions are still being tested.

The collection reflects a wider point about furniture content. Architects and specifiers need well-made digital objects that fit naturally into their workflows. When a chair is available as a Bimstore Revit family, it can be considered earlier and used with more confidence during design development.

Bimstore already hosts furniture content from manufacturers with strong design-led ranges. Gresham Office Furniture brings workplace furniture into the platform through manufacturer-approved Revit content. deadgood offers British-made furniture with a distinct design language. naughtone provides furniture and interior products for commercial spaces, focusing on useful, well-designed pieces.

We welcome furniture manufacturers who want their products to be available where architects and designers are already making project decisions. Furniture is a category our community actively searches for, and accurate digital content gives those products a simplified route into live designs. The Iconic Chair Collection gives Bimstore users access to 13 recognisable chair forms, each with a unique design history.

Explore the Iconic Chairs Collection here.