A museum acquires Martino Gamper's 100 Chairs In 100 Days from Nilufar Archives

Italian designer Martino Gamper's 100 Chairs in 100 Days (2007), preserved as a complete body of work in Nilufar Gallery archives for nearly two decades, has been acquired in its entirety by an international museum. “The complete series of one hundred chairs created in 2007 has been acquired by a major institution, whose name will be announced in the coming months. The acquisition represents institutional recognition of a body of work that has profoundly shaped the discourse surrounding reuse, authorship and the design process,” Nilufar notes in an official statement.

Created in London in 2007, 100 Chairs in 100 Days emerged over 100 consecutive days, during which Gamper collected discarded chairs from streets, homes and second-hand markets, transforming one chair each day through processes of cutting, grafting, joining and recombination. On several occasions, Gamper has created a new 100th chair for specific exhibitions, using locally sourced materials and found objects.

"100 Chairs in 100 Days was an exercise in looking, making and reimagining. By taking apart existing chairs and recombining their elements, I was interested in discovering how far an everyday object could be transformed while still remaining a chair. The project was not about perfection, but about intuition, improvisation and the possibilities that emerge when working with what already exists. Each chair became a conversation between different histories, materials and functions, revealing new identities through unexpected combinations,” the contemporary designer notes in the official release.

For Nina Yashar, founder of Nilufar, the acquisition represents the culmination of a journey that began in 2009, when she decided to acquire the entire series and champion its presentation at Triennale Milano. "From the very beginning, I believed that the strength of this project resided in its entirety. I never considered the individual chairs as autonomous works, but rather as parts of a single narrative. For this reason, I chose to preserve them together, accompanying their journey through time. Seeing them now enter a museum collection represents the recognition of a decision made many years ago and of the extraordinary relevance this work continues to hold within the landscape of contemporary design," Yashar notes.

Since its debut in 2007, 100 Chairs in 100 Days has been presented internationally at institutions including Triennale Milano, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Benaki Museum in Athens, MIMOCA in Japan, the RMIT Design Hub in Melbourne and City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand.

To mark this important institutional milestone, Nilufar will reunite a selection of the 100 chairs at the Nilufar Warehouse on June 30, 2026. The event will offer one of the final opportunities to experience the project before it is transferred to the museum collection. “During the evening, Martino Gamper will carry out a restoration intervention on the chairs, continuing a practice that has accompanied the public life of the work for years and that continues to sustain its transformative potential,” Nilufar shares.