Quasar Khanh

Lifetime

1934–2016

Country

France / Vietnam

Nguyen Manh Khanh was born in Hanoi in 1934. From 1955 to 1958, he studied at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées in Paris, then worked as an engineer on the construction of the Manicouagan Dam in Quebec. In 1960, he filed his first patent in France – for a car boot.

In 1967–1968, under the Quasar France name, he launched the Aerospace series of inflatable furniture: the Satellite, Apollo, Chesterfield, Relax, Venus and Mars armchairs, the Moonport sofa, ceiling lights and screens. The furniture was heat-sealed from PVC film, with each chamber inflated through a separate valve. He patented the solution of separately connected chambers (French priority dated 15 November 1967; US patent 3 572 836 from 1971). MoMA acquired his inflatable armchair as early as 1969; the Satellite armchair cost around 190 francs in Paris.

At the same time, he designed vehicles: the Quasar-Unipower car (1964) with a transparent body, produced from 1967 to 1969 by the British company Universal Power Drives; in 1968, the Cubicar model cost 2160 dollars and reached 55 miles per hour. In 1969, he created his foam armchair, and in later years he patented hovercraft and aeroplanes. He died on 30 June 2016 in Ho Chi Minh City. His work is held in the collections of MoMA, V&A, Centre Pompidou and Design Museum Brussels.