Today we passed the legless back and seat of a ubiquitous faux Eames polycarbomate chair. We stopped and pondered if we could make it whole by splicing it with another chair. We suddenly realized the influence designer Martino Gamper had on our thinking, whose clever 100 Chairs in 100 Days we’d seen in passing.
The motivation was the methodology: the process of making, of producing and absolutely not striving for the perfect one. This kind of making was very much about restrictions rather than freedom. The restrictions were key: the material, the style or the design of the found chairs and the time available — just a 100 days…
I wanted the project to stimulate a new form of design-thinking and to provoke debate about the value, functionality and the appropriateness of style for certain types of chair. What happens to the status and potential of a plastic garden chair when it is upholstered with luxurious yellow suede?
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The process of personal action that leads towards making rather than hesitating.
Gamber’s creations out of tossed off fragments of chairs FIRE our imaginations as we pass them in our day…And make us realize that all the design and art we look at has an effect…subtly educating and expanding our minds…
You can buy Martino’s Book of 100 Chairs in 100 Days here.
