Konstantin Grcic's take on the ‘Box’ chair launches a new series inviting designers to ruminate on an item of particular significance to them. Created in 1975 by Italian Enzo Mari for Castelli, the functional, desk-bound star of today’s first installment of On Design was devised to be self-assembled and easy to dismantle for storage. It was Grcic’s own model for a chair, Chair One for Magis, which launched his career, becoming a design classic that is today held in the permanent collections of New York’s MoMA and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Originally trained as a cabinet maker, Grcic made the bold step into industrial design before studying at the Royal College of Art, London. “As a craftsman I became so fascinated by machinery and this idea of working through the processes and limitations of design,” explains Munich-based Grcic, who remodelled the interior of an apartment in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse earlier this year and has collaborated with brands including Flos, Magis and Iittala. “The machine really forces you to work and think as a designer.”