Chairs that were, chairs that are, the moment at Salone del Mobile Milano 2021

Chairs have been around for centuries. They have existed to dictate social and economic class (a queen’s throne vs. a pauper’s stool), or varied services (a dentist’s chair, a Pope’s seat) and for pure function, like seats in a metro train or in a classroom. The modern working and capitalist society spends more time sitting on chairs than anywhere else – you literally find them everywhere, from park benches, formal ones in workplaces, to row seats in stadiums and demure ones in hospital waiting rooms, even ones you cannot sit on, in museums. It really is the most common, ubiquitous form of furniture design.

“Because no other object has ever better summed up the importance of design, whether it reflects a passing fad or a cornerstone of civilisation. This awareness is the starting point for a unique narrative journey from 1954 to the present day, depicting the role that chair design has played in its many and varied iterations through the tremendous changes that society has undergone, and how it has reacted to cultural paradigm shifts with ingenuity and utterly inspired approaches and forms,” says Nina Bassoli, curator of the unmissable Take Your Seat exhibition at Milan Design Week 2021.

For the STIR at Supersalone series, we round up the most interesting, ergonomic, philosophical and purely aesthetical chairs designed and displayed at the ongoing Salone del Mobile.Milano 2021 – sit tight and read on.

1. Take Your Seat / Solitude and Conviviality of the Chair

“What effects are generated by the act of sitting? What thoughts, mechanisms and relationships come into play while we sit? How do we relate to others and the space around us? As an object, how does the chair encourage interaction and sharing when grouped together with other chairs to form a system?” asks Bassoli, who curated this exhibition currently on at the Rho trade fair venue in Milan for the Supersalone. Featuring 30 winners of ADI’s Compasso d'Oro Award and more than 100 honourable mentions, these chairs sit to prove their “unquestionably political, social and cultural testament to time”. High-impact displays designed by Alessandro Colombo and Perla Gianni Falvo encompass chairs from the 50s to the present day, ranging from Achille Castiglioni's Polet chair to Little Albert by Ron Arad and more, studying their underlying aesthetic, evolution, and contributions to society at large.

The exhibition is spread across the four pavilions into thematic sections that focus on a chair’s different uses: Take Your Seat addresses the meaning of sitting and the symbolic and ceremonial function of a chair; Work Learn Produce is a designed archipelago that focuses on workplace chairs and their evolution; Cook Set Share examines the chair as a social object employed for interacting and sharing values; Going Out: Going Public delves into the chair as it leaves a private sphere and enters a public one, such as an arena or café; and an extra section within the ADI Design Museum that includes chairs that have never won the award, are metaphorical, anti-modern, symbolic, and radical.

2. The Dior Medallion Chair

For the 59th edition of the Milan Design Week, Dior Maison invited 17 artists and designers from the world over, to reinterpret one of its most iconic emblems, the Medallion Chair, resulting in its biggest participation at the fair till date. The original Louis XVI chair, tapered with an oval back was chosen by Christian Dior to accommodate his guests in his white neoclassical interiors, described as “sober, simple, but above all classic and Parisian” in his memoirs.

The professionals who put their own creative, interesting spins on the fashion house's iconic chair include Nendo,India Mahdavi, Sam Baron, Pierre Yovanovitch, Dimorestudio, Khaled El Mays, Ma Yansong, Martino Gamper, Nacho Carbonell, Pierre Charpin, Joy de Rohan Chabot, Linde Freya Tangelder, Constance Guisset, Atang Tshikare, Jinyeong Yeon, Tokujin Yoshioka and Seungjin Yang.

3. Cross Cultural Chairs

Curated by Matteo Guarnaccia, this is a project about the global cultural context of chairs, bringing together eight chairs from eight of the most populous countries including Brazil, India, Japan and China, collaborating with local design studios and artisans to make the seats. Three years in the making, Cross Cultural Chairs explores socio-cultural differences from the research of materials, environments, and manufacturing processes of seats, in an attempt to understand how globalisation affects design and its users.

Each country adapts to the project differently, owing to its culture, local materials and prevalent aesthetic connotations, as well as the methods of making. Guarnaccia's research involves visits to museums, landmarks, interviewing locals and established designers, and developing concepts. He then moved on to the production of the prototype and finalised it all by photographing and noting down the chair's creative journey. On show at Base Milano currently, the project will manifest as a book, documentary and final exhibition in Barcelona's design museum.

4. Flowing Fragments by Richard Yasmine

This collection by the Lebanese designer responds to the compelling and underlying facets ignored in the design industry today or only followed on a surface level: of reducing waste and of consciously upcycling. Exhibited at a digital platform created by 5VIE, Flowing Fragments is a series of 16 variations of limited-edition tables-cum-stools along with 16 sculptures, inspired from the world of architecture, specifically from the Greco-Roman civilisation, merging in a sleek manner, with the post-contemporary aesthetic. These 32 pieces are actually an offcut from production processes, showing how waste can be turned into dramatic sculptural pieces, professing practical sustainable design practices.

Each object is created from alternating slabs of sedimentary and basaltic stones, assembled to create a single component. The cube is then cut to imitate ancient classical orders, minimising and giving them a more geometric setting, from smooth arches to triangular edges, and forming an accompanying offcut in the process. Flowing Fragments speaks of saving the remaining, forgotten fragments of previous civilisations, raising awareness about protecting abandoned sites and highlighting trafficked antiquities. It also brings to focus the destruction and neglect of authentic landmarks, in an age where heritage is threatened by urban development.

5. Urania by Pietro Franceschini

Urania is the latest work by architect Franceschini, presented during the Supersalone exclusively for Galerie Philia as part of the ongoing Rick Owens – Dialog with Emerging Italian Designers exhibition. This focuses on Rick Owens's designs, questioned, and referenced by the exhibiting professionals, along with his own impactful artworks.

Robot-sculpted in Carrara from a single block of Breccia di Capraia marble and refined by hand, Urania is part sculpture and part furniture, a limited edition of 8+4 chairs, an experiment in 'neotenic design'. “Here for the first time, the pure and rigorous geometry of Pietro’s work gets deformed and speaks a more organic language. Urania is iconic, classic and playful,” the gallery observes.

6. Cha‐cha, Welcome, Mr. Breuer by Khaled El Mays

On display at the Nilufar Depot in Milan, the Jungle is a series of furniture inspired from flora and fauna, a topic that has been of utmost exploration for Khaled El Mays, a multi-disciplinary design studio based in Beirut. All the product designs are handmade and recreate nature, aiming to freeze moments of natural beauty and emerge as functional ones, dipped in tactility and visuals. Wood, leather, raffia, wicker and thread bind to become these pieces that encapsulate in themselves, forms, colours and textures of elephants, snakes, flowers, grass and mountains.

“The approach to design tackles the possibility of a primitive future in furniture production that puts the human hand at the forefront and makes it a defining element in the production process,” explains the exhibition gallery in a press note.  

7. Odyssey By Andrés Reisinger

Another compelling and immersive collection of chairs form part of the program at Nilufar Gallery, where Andrés Reisinger’s collection mixes digital chairs with physical ones in the space. Three works of furniture make up Odyssey, documenting other worlds, detached from time and space, elevating Reisinger as an essential, fresh voice in the contemporary design world. “The overall effect is to plunge the visitor into a futuristic realm, staging an encounter with new narrative possibilities for design,” shares the gallery.

“Reisinger's work also operates at other levels, sensitively exploring the emotional terrain and theoretical implications of digital-led design,” they add.

8. Mezzoterra Mezzomare by Michelangelo Pistoletto with Juan E. Sandoval

Six Milano Galleria is exhibiting a significant portion of the project Mezzoterra Mezzomare by Italian painter, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and his artwork created in 2007 that “underlines the message of dispersion and communication inherent in the sea as a natural crossroad of peoples”. Pistoletto and Sandoval transform the chair designed by Riccardo Blumer for Alias, at the boundary between earth and sea, between art and design. The furniture becomes a work of art, probing differences between cultures and respecting these differences, “wanting to sit down and look at how much we are the same and how much different,” reads the description shared by the gallery.