“This project involves systematically collecting discarded chairs from London streets (or more frequently, friends’ homes) over a period of about roughly two years, then spending 100 days to reconfiguring the design of each one in an attempt to transform its character and/or the way it functions. My intention was to investigate the potential for creating useful new designs by blending together stylistic or instrumental elements of existing chair types.
I see it as a chance to create a “three-dimensional sketchbook”, a set of playful yet thought provoking designs that, due to the time constraint, are put together with a minimum of analysis. As well as possibility making one or more designs that might be suitable for mass production, I intended to question the idea of there being an innate superiority in the one-off, to use this mongrel morphology to demonstrate the difficulty of any particular design being objectively judged “the best”. The chairs illustrate – and celebrate – the geographical, historical, and human resonance of design: what can they tell us about, the sociological context of seating from different areas, and the people who owned each one? The stories behind the chairs are as important as their style or even their function.
The project suggests new way to stimulate design thinking, and provokes debate about a numbers of issues, including value, different types of functionality and what is an appropriate style for certain types of chairs – for example, what happens to the status and potential of a plastic garden chairs (conventionally located slap bang in the idiom of unremarkable functionality) when it is upholstered with luxurious brown suede? In essence, this exercise champions a certain elasticity of approach – both in terms in highlighting the importance of the sociological / personal / geographical / historical context of design, and in enabling the creative potential of elements of randomness and spontaneity to be brought to the fore.”
Martino Gamper
