Talk:Barcelona chair

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Barcelona table?[edit]

I was at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC this past weekend, and in several areas they had seating of Barcelona chairs set up, with an accompanying and stylistically very similar coffee table. Anyone know anything about a connection between the two? – ɜɿøɾɪɹℲ ( тɐʟк • ¢ʘи†ʀ¡βs ) 02:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright Drama[edit]

5th July 2007

The WIKI Barcelona chair article has been deleted because it is in breach of our copyright. The person who posted this article eventually admitted to us via e-mail correspondence that they were at fault and did unwittingly plagiarize our original article to create the WIKI article. A copy of their email is given below.

I wish to make these points very clear because it is obvious the person involved with creating this article have no idea on what steps to take to prevent infringing someones copyright.

WIKI OR ANYONE WRITING AN ARTICLE FOR WIKI IS NOT PERMITTED TO USE OUR ARTICLE IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM

That means the following:

You may not use our article to form the basis of a new article. You may not re-word our article or sections of our article. You may not add to our article or a reworded/reworked version of our article. You may not copy the structure of our article to create the structure of your new article. You may not add to WIKI ANY material that is derived from our original article or reworded/reworded versions of our article.

The only thing we can permit is for WIKI to have a link to our original article. That is all.

We have documented proof that we created the original Barcelona chair article on which the WIKI article is based. We have all 7 drafts of our article. We have the drafts registered at a copyright solicitor firm as proof of the date on which the article was written. The internet archive also shows that our article was online before the WIKI article.


The person who posted the WIKI article had in fact based their article on an article which was supplied by and Indian copyrighting company who were contracted to write the article for the infringer. The Indian company had primarily used our article as the basis of the article supplied and the plagiarizer had not checked the sources properly before posting the article at WIKI.

We have many e-mail correspondence with the infringer and they have admitted fault and wish to put the situation right. One of the key emails with this person is given below. In it they admit they used our article unlawfully and posted the article at WIKI. They also admitted that is breaching our copyright:

<Start of letter from copyright infringer>

"I understand that our internal records of the creation dates are not sufficiently 'independent' as to provide reliable evidence, but more importantly it seems that the dates shown by those records (February 2006) do in fact post date your own article, suggesting that our content development agency provided us with material that was not original. As I explained, we will have to wait for tomorrow morning before I receive details on that.

I would like to pause here and offer my apologies for 'jumping down your throat'. We were indeed given a list of references by this agency, (sites and books that they had referenced in the creation of the article), and it is entirely my fault that I did not check those referenced articles to verify that we did not lean so heavily on them as to constitute plagiarism. Your site was indeed among those listed, and had I reviewed them, of course I would have noticed the similarities to your own article.

The Wiki article is more easily traceable: If you go to wikipedia's history of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barcelona_chair&limit=500&action=history You will find the full history of my edits to this page. Ironically you can also see there that the link to your site from this page remains untouched throughout my edits September 20th - 29th 06.

Sorry to have to break off again, but I have a meeting to get to and I thought it best to send you this in the mean time. I will return later today to answer your other questions.

But before I go I would like to assure you that the article on <web address deleted here for privacy > will be rewritten immediately"

<End of email from copyright infringer>

We also have more correspondence with this individual and it is clear they do not fully understand copyright and how it works. They also have not put in sufficient measures to ensure that any work they post is not infringing existing copyrights. Unfortunately this individual is doing damage to WIKI by posting. This is actually damaging WIKI and could lead to legal implications for this great resource.

I hope that this is a close to the matter. If WIKI wish to have a Barcelona chair article then write your own article from scratch without reference to our article.

Sincerely

Dr John M Bolton


The text that was reposted has been deleted. The reason is the STRUCTURE of the article and wording of the article has been taken from our article and is therefore an infringement in copyright. I suggest that the person that is responsible for re-posting this article become fully acquainted with copyright issues.

The article would not appear so similar to our if the article had been originally researched and written independently without reference to our work. WIKI cannot take our article and use it as a basis for creating a WIKI article and then simply rephrase it. You must research fully your own article and uniquely write it completely from scratch ie to create your own structure and your own content without using our article to build your article.

We are requesting that the person/s that have posted this article back up make themselves know by giving their full name, contact details and e-mail address and submit that information to our contact form at our website. Please also state if you are also the person that wrote the majority of the "new article" that was based on ours.

http://www.barcelona-tourist-guide.com/contact-us.html

Please understand I do support the WIKI initiative and I welcome that information is being made available to the public. However please try to understand our point of view as well. We have paid good money and time to research these articles. We paid to visit the pavillion in Barcelona, to visit shops that sold the Barcelona chair and to talk with the staff members and curators - in all 2 days research along with another 2 days to further research, edit and write the article. We created an original piece of work that has structure and content which is copyrightable.

Please re-search your own article and spend the time to develop your own structure - this is where the hard work is - and it costs money and time to do this. By taking our article and re-working it you are actually undermining organizations like ours that are working hard to create original content.

Dr John M Bolton.



Bold text26th December 2006

Response from WIKI management after investigation: [Ticket#2006122010014744] Copyright infringement notice.

Dear John,

Thank you for your mail. The material to which you are referring seems to have been removed. Feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.


21st December 2006 The WIKI text that was written based on our original article has now been deleted. Please do not use our articles for the basis of building your WIKI article.

We think WIKI it is a wonderful idea however not at the expense of a legitimate publishing businesses.

Thank you

81.39.2.44 08:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC) Dr John Bolton[reply]


Dear Wiki Management

I wish to bring to the attention of WIKI officials / Management that our original written article on the Barcelona Chair appears to have been used extensively as the basis of this Wiki article and has sections which are almost identical to our work both in content and structure. Not only is the phrasing similar but also the order of facts and logical progression of the article also very closely match our original article.

It is not acceptable to take our work as a basis for an article and simply re-phrase / reword our content. The research and logical thought processes required to create this article cost us time and money and forms the basis of a copyrightable work.

We would therefore claim that the WIKI article would appear to be in breach of our copyright and we are therefore requesting that this article be permanently removed from the WIKI site.

Our terms for using our written material are very clear on our site. No organization may reference our work without our written agreement. We did not give rights to anyone to use our work in this manner and therefore we are requesting the work be removed permanently from the WIKI site.

We are also requesting that WIKI contact all other internet sites that have now used this article or replicated it and have ensure that is is removed from those sites since WIKI is making this work available under copyleft. Wiki does not have a right to do this when the work is based on our work. This will also constitute damage to our business that relies on creating quality original content.

We are also requesting that the full contact details of the author/s of this WIKI article be disclosed to us so that we can take appropriate action against the authors of this article. If deemed necessary we will need to request for compensation for the time required to follow up on this action to protect our work.

I appreciate that wiki is creating a valuable resource for people however it should not be at the expense of organizations like ours that have spent a lot of time and money to build, research and write original content only to have free sites like WIKI create very similar copies of our work and then make it available under copyleft. This seriously degrades the value of the content on our site and also degrades the value our articles which we have worked hard to create. It also does not do any favours for publishers like ours that add valuable content on the internet.

Here are the sections of work that were in our article and appear in the wiki article: I would appreciate it if someone from WIKI management can investigate this. We can provide evidence to prove our article existed before that of wiki and our work was originally created by us if required. If proof is required then we will need to charge WIKI administration costs for the time required for us to prove our ownership. If you need to check quickly when our articles first appeared online then I suggest you go to the internet archive and you will see a time stamp when our article was published.

Here are some portions of the text that we see as infringing our coprights.

Our original text: "The Exposition was a world affair, an important event with the Spanish royals and several European government officials attending. Mies fully appreciated the significance of the occasion.

He knew that what he designed had to be “an important chair, a very elegant chair and costly. It had to be monumental. You couldn’t just use a kitchen chair”.- Mies 1929 "

Wiki Text: "The exhibition was an occasion of international importance, attended by the Spanish Royal family as well as many government officials from around Europe. Mies was well aware of this significance and of the challenges that faced him when he set about designing the chair for the Pavilion, he commented at the time that this was to be

"an important chair, a very elegant chair and costly. It had to be monumental. You couldn't just use a kitchen chair" Mies 1929."

Our original text: "Constructing the Chair frame in stainless steel meant that the whole frame could now be made from one fluid piece of metal.


Wiki text "The originals pre-dated stainless steel and seamless (ground) welds so the legs had to be bolted together. Today's This allowed the frame to be formed from a single piece of metal, and so it was that the bolts of the original were replaced by the smooth lines that we are familiar with today.

Our original text:

In 1929 Barcelona was host to the World Arts Fair, and the German government commissioned Mies to design the German Pavilion at Montjuic as part of the exposition.

Mies Van der Rohe Pavillion in Barcelona housing the 2 Chairs designed for the king and queen of Spain With the Pavilion Mies succeeded in his vision of a modern building with a free spatial flow, built with glass, steel and four kinds of marble.

However once he had created the building his mind turned to designing the furniture that would be used in it. Creating furniture may be a simple task compared to a whole building some might say, but not according to Mies:

The chair is a very difficult object. Everyone who has ever tried to make one knows that. There are endless possibilities and many problems - the chair has to be light, it has to be strong, it has to be comfortable. It is almost easier to build a sky scraper than a chair.” - Mies 1930


Wiki Text: Mies was commissioned by the German Government to design the German Pavilion at the Barcelona World Arts Fair to be held at Montjuic in Spain in 1929. ... Built of glass, steel and three types of marble, its linear simplicity is characterized by great flowing expanses, utilizing unbroken planes of each material, juxtaposed with one another.

Having completed the design for the building, Mies and Lilly began work on the furniture for its interior. In an interview the year following the fair Mies said the following regarding chair design:

"The chair is a very difficult object. Everyone who has ever tried to make one knows that. There are endless possibilities and many problems - the chair has to be light, it has to be strong, it has to be comfortable It is almost easier to build a skyscraper than a chair" Mies 1930.


Our original text: 

In fact now you can also find footstools, sofa versions and the like, none of which have been designed by Mies, but follow the design rules of the Barcelona Chair, i.e. the same legs and quilted square style upholstery.

Wiki Text: The rest of the Barcelona range was not designed by Mies, but true to his design, they use the same style legs, and the same type of quilted and piped leather upholstery.

Our text: However Mies was meant to be a Bauhaus designer, someone who believed in functional furniture, that could be mass produced for workers .... and herein lies the contradiction as the Barcelona Chair is actually both expensive and difficult to mass produce.

Wiki Text

Philosophically mid century modernists including Mies generally subscribed to the idea that modern furniture should be accessible to the masses, both financially and aesthetically. However the Barcelona chair is an exception to this rule. The materials and construction are too expensive, too labor intensive and therefor too costly to make it widely accessible.

]

I note also that the wiki webpage originally referenced our work as an external link. However once the new WIKI article appeared with our content our reference URL was removed. This is further evidence that someone used our article as the basis to create the wiki article and then removed our reference link. This is the url of our page:

http://www.barcelona-tourist-guide.com/shopping/barcelona-chair.html


Thank you for your attention. 81.39.2.44 22:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)Dr John M Bolton Director of www.barcelona-tourist-guide.com[reply]

"An untold anecdote"[edit]

Does anyone have a citation for this? Does it really belong here even if so? (Quite a number of chair designs have become "icons"; I bet several have been sat on in museums.) Gareth McCaughan 02:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed it. The story is apocryphal, trivial, and vaguely anti-US. We wouldn't write "a Polish visitor" or "a Chinese visitor", would we? Rhobite 22:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Missing Information[edit]

Shouldn't the article mention that, for a world-renowned icon of design from a school whose guiding principle is "form follows function,"the Barcelona chair is remarkably uncomfortable to sit in? 207.119.20.8 (talk) 17:58, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Picture[edit]

Wouldn't it be better to use a picture of a faithful reproduction that has the same proportions as the original? There are multiple pictures on the Commons of the chairs that were reconstructed for the rebuilt Barcelona Pavillion . These pictures also show the original setting the chairs were meant for. Consider these Pictures:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pavelleó_Mies_van_del_Rohe_-_Barcelona_Chair.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pavelló_Mies_06.JPG

There are multiple issues with the picture used at the moment:
- the back cushion is too high. The back cushion of the original has the same height as the frame
- the base cushion is a rectangle. The base cushion of the original is slanted were it meets the frame. 188.22.138.19 (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not a neutral point of view[edit]

The sentence "Reproductions proliferate worldwide and are sold under different marketing names" is not neutral in point of view. Furniture and apparel sold under a mark is not handmade by the designer. They're ALL reproductions. In exchange for money, the designer agrees to let some entitities who pay the people who make the reproductions say "This is genuine so-and-so". Those who do not offer enough money are denied the right to say "This is genuine so-and-so". Knoll has, or thinks it has, been granted the right to say 'This is not a reproduction but a "real" Barcelona chair' although they are simply reproducing a design created by the designer, who can't possibly be doing the real work since he is dead. Well, Knoll are entitled to their opinion but their opinion is not relevant in an encyclopedia. I don't come here to read "Christ was the Messiah" when it should say "Christians believe Christ was the Messiah". You're supposed to report on the EXISTENCE of dogmas and ideologies NEUTRALLY, i.e. without EMBRACING any one particular dogma or ideology. The assertion that some of the COPIES and REPRODUCTIONS of the Barcelona Chair are NOT copies nor reproductions, based solely on a piece of paper signed by a party who is not disinterested in the question, is reprehensible. Many "copies" and "reproductions" of Barcelona Chairs exist, including the copies and reproductions made by Knoll. If I have a Knoll chair in front of me, in what way is it any different from the same chair made by someone else? Because there's a contract in a vault somewhere? That doesn't alter the real and material physical characteristics and attributes of the chair in front of me, the physical object. What kind of encyclopedia must Wiki be to parrot the industry party line that PHYSICAL REALITY is changed by a legal agreement? (I don't deny that people sign contracts that bind them to change material things. I DO deny that as ink dries on on a signature-line its drying is causing a PHYSICAL change in the molecules and atoms in a chair in a remote location so that it is no longer a "reproduction" but is, from thence onward, a "licensed genuine article". But WikiP, apparently, believes in magic.) Do you write your copy to please Knoll, or to serve the public? Does Knoll pay you to flak the ideological theories underlying trademarking? If you're going to be doing Public Relations work for Knoll, shouldn't some consortium of interested parties compensate you and shouldn't you disclose such compensation?2604:2000:C6AA:B400:F0BC:4D2C:D44C:C7D9 (talk) 01:41, 14 August 2015 (UTC)Christopher L. Simpson[reply]

Wow. Wikipedia is written by the community in accordance with policies developed by the community; there is no corporate control/sponsorship/whatever. Anybody can join in, but people with specialist knowledge are especially welcome. If you can improve the article, with references to reliable sources where possible, you are welcome to do so. If you need help with editing, put the text "{{helpme}}" followed by your question, on your talk page, and chances are somebody helpful will respond quickly. Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 02:11, 14 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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