It's interesting to hear you say that, but slightly depressing that it's four oblongs of leather coated sponge in a right-angle wireframe holder, designed in 1928 and selling for a thousand dollars.
It should be comfortable, and it should be more like $200 and out of copyright by now.
Where's the innovation in furniture that would make that chair look like technology from 1928?
I would say it very much looks like technology from 1928. Compare it with the minimalist forms of Gio Ponti's Superleggera Chair, or side-by-side against the sinuous curves of a Rio chaise by Oscar Niemeyer. The LC3 looks downright old & Bauhaus-y.
Re. the innovation: This is a fascinating topic. One difference might be a result of value retention. A furniture model from 2006 won't have compatibility issues with the latest upholstery. I'm being silly to a degree, but knowing my iPhone 3GS will soon run at the speed of snot does not endear the thing's design to me. So old style could stick around without seeming too outdated, reducing the need for innovation.
Second, related thought about design innovation (again, from my very non-authoritative perspective) Furniture design seems have two extremes in innovation: A) periods of minor & incremental developments, essentially stagnation. B) Radical developments based on changes in artists' context.
The long periods where innovation is noticeably absent generally parallel times when artisans have no new medium in which to elevate their craft. During these periods, they're generally relegated to small changes: modifications & cosmetic variations on mostly-optimized forms.
Same as in vehicle design or computer hardware, the real magic happens when you develop new materials for medium & new methods for construction. (Esp. when those materials that improve fundamentals, a material's increased load-bearing ability will radically enhance what is possible in chair design.)
A good example are the years after bentwood techniques are pioneered, where designers for firms such as Thonet and J.J. Kohn produced radical new forms - the organic curves of Thonet rocking chairs look decades ahead of their mid-1800s origins, and they anticipate Art Nouveau by more than a quarter-century.
The same innovation groundswell appeared when synthetic materials (Lucite, plastic laminate & other petro-products) are introduced to the consumer markets post-WWII. A generation of design names like Charles & Ray Eames, Verner Panton, Charles Hollis Jones & Ettore Sottsass seized on these materials, creating parallel expressions of the abstraction & geometry in post-war architecture.
Recommend reading on hotbeds of design innovation:
The Sevres Porcelain Manufactory: Alexandre Brongniart and the Triumph of Art and Industry, 1800-1847 pub. by Yale University Press for the Bard Graduate Center
Italian Lighting Design 1945-2000 by Alberto Bassi
