Peter Jon Pearce

Peter Jon Pearce (October 8, 1936)^[1] is an American product designer, author, and inventor.

Peter Jon Pearce
Born	(1936-10-08) October 8, 1936 (age 88) Geneva, New York, United States
Occupation(s)	American product designer, author, and inventor.

He is the designer of the Cachet Chair, Manufactured by Steelcase,^[2] as well as the designer of the Curved Space Diamond Structure, a playground climbing sculpture, installed at playgrounds throughout the U.S., The Brooklyn Children's Museum, and the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan, where it has been a popular attraction since 1978.^[3] He earned his degree in product design from IIT Institute of Design.

Pearce was offered a job with Charles Eames after Eames saw the bent-plywood lounge chair he made in college.^[1] While employed by Eames he contributed to the following projects:

-Made adaptations to the design of the furniture bases for the "Aluminum Group Furniture".

-Member of the Eames design and production crew for the film "Glimpses of the U.S.A."

-One of four team members who produced the prototypes of the "Time-Life Chair and Stool", designed for the Time & Life Building lobbies.

-Staff member involved in the development of the 1961 "La Fonda Chair", made for the La Fonda del Sol restaurant which opened in New York's Time & Life Building, in 1961.

-Staff member involved in the development of the "Eames Contract Storage" units.

-One of four team members who produced the prototype of the "Eames Tandem Sling Seating", initially installed at O'Hare and Dulles airports.

-Staff member involved in the development of the 3473 Sofa.^[4]

He was an assistant to Buckminster Fuller^[5][6] and is the author of several books including "Structure in Nature Is a Strategy for Design".^[7] His focus on high-performance design, and on achieving sustainability in his designs, is seen in the methodologies used in the design of the Cachet Chair,^[8] his work on Biosphere 2, and in the design of the Pearce Ecohouse. The Pearce Ecohouse design, emulates the hexagonal structures of nature and is a green structure built from glass and steel using prefab construction. It is solar powered and will use net-zero energy.^[9]

Publications

• Pearce, Peter, and Susan Pearce. Experiments in Form: A Foundation Course in Three-Dimensional Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1980. ISBN 9780442264970
• Pearce, Peter, and Susan Pearce. Polyhedra Primer. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978. ISBN 0-442-26496-8
• Pearce, Peter. Structure in Nature Is a Strategy for Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978. ISBN 9780262160643

Patents

• Peter J Pearce Patents^[10]

Exhibitions

• Pacific Standard Time Presents series:Modern Architecture in L.A. at the Getty Museum (2013)^[11]
• Everything Loose Will Land at The Schindler House (2013)^[12]