Identity Crises
It has been a while since I have written anything semi-seriously on design, let alone for that matter, chairs. Naturally in the intervening period I have thought about design, deeply, but I've been somewhat lethargic in my approach and passion for designing, and writing about sitting and seating. That isn't to say however that my purchasing habit has dissipated. In the past 6 months, 2 new chairs have entered my life, I also had a minor run in with a Hans Wegner couch that resulted in me snapping a ~50 year old oak supporting slat; ensuing a near 4 month journey to source, replace, and refine a simple component. This has in a way been a strong metaphor not only of my job search in Australia, about the difficulty setting up in a new location on
I've been away because we decided to move to the other side of the world. We are now based in mostly-sunny Melbourne, Australia. The home of Olivia and her family, and now my new home for the foreseeable. It's a city much lauded for it's quote unquote livability, which on the face of it actually takes about 4.5 months for you to fully realise. It's a friendly city that sprawls from a stagnant bay in the south, curves around to the south eastern mornington peninsula, stretches into the dusty stretches north and rubs up against bush covered hills to the east of the city. Despite the necessity to drive, on the whole it is pretty easy going. Even the city slickers, yuppies and corporate types in the central business district (CBD) generally have a laid back attitude and overall stance. In many ways it feels similar to the UK too; people drive on the left hand side of the road, eat similar things, and share common rivalries. Football is quite different; an odd hybrid of rugby league, football (soccer) and played on a cricket pitch, the tactics are difficult to pick up and seem to defy standard logic - but oddly it works. It too is probably quite a succinct allegory of attitudes of design and creation in Australia - this perhaps is a topic I would like to get into another time.
For the longest while I have had friends and family members asking when the next piece of writing for On Chairs is coming to a screen near them, and for the past 7 months or so I have been saying 'soon'. In reality I was simply tired. Tired and disillusioned of an industry that doesn't care for me as much as I care for it, tired of a cascading scheme of big life changes that left me feeling like I had been pinging around like a pinball - finishing a masters, moving house for the umpteenth time in a successive years, finding a life partner, getting married, changing teams at work, taking on more accountability at work, moving to the other side of the world. Despite having a long list of things to write about I've been lacking the vigour to simply do the writing, however I came to the realisation that I need to stop worrying about the end result and simply write for writing sake. You'll see too that the website has had a little refresh. I hope you enjoy that. My view, having had a little time away from this, is that On Chairs is and should be a form of journaling, and because design is really the main topic I display some very minor sort of expertise in, I've decided to crown this moving forward a 'design journal'. That way this thing becomes a vehicle for the process of writing rather than necessarily too focussed on being a compendium or set volume of writings.
If the above sounds like I've been having a bit of an identity crisis, trust your instinct. To this, I wanted to write about a chair that to me demonstrates the concept of 'identity crisis' but also positions a juxtaposition in forms and typology of what a chair is, or can be. This too is interesting for me as I believe that design generally over the past few years has been having an identity crisis, and I'm sure that I'm not the first designer to ponder the question of what sort of designer am I.
The Monobloc and Lockheed Lounge: Two Polarised Identities
Perhaps no contrast better illustrates this crisis of design identity than the humble Monobloc chair and Marc Newson's audacious Lockheed Lounge. To situate both of these designs against one another is fairly unusual because they are so different. These two objects represent the extreme poles of our discipline—one ubiquitous and democratic, the other exclusive and rarefied, essentially useless.
Marc Newson making the Lockheed Chair, circa 1988
The Monobloc, that universally recognisable injection-moulded plastic chair, embodies a perfect paradox. Really rather than being a singular design by a singular author, it's really more of a typology. Seen on streets, back yards, liminal office spaces, gardens and campsites around the world, it is simultaneously the most produced chair in human history (with billions manufactured) and perhaps the most critically derided. At approximately $3.50 production cost per unit, it has achieved something revolutionary over the span of its production—universal affordability across global markets and as such the ubiquity of use that all singular designers deep down truly long for from their designs. Yet this democratisation also represents its greatest contradiction. The very qualities that made it revolutionary—affordability and mass production—have transformed it into a symbol of environmental concern and an icon of our globalised disposable consumer culture.
Unlike most iconic designs, the Monobloc exists in a categorical limbo. It doesn't fit neatly into modernism, postmodernism, or contemporary design frameworks. Negligent of aesthetic esteem, this ambiguity extends to how it's perceived—simultaneously viewed as the epitome of democratic design and derided as the emblem of tasteless mass production. Despite costing just a few dollars to produce, it shares museum space with chairs costing thousands of times more. This coexistence in both high and low cultural spheres creates a dissonance that few other designed objects experience and comes from it's contextual ambiguity. This product is the outcome of economic objectives and excellence in product engineering, not like most design, individual vision and fortitude.
The exploration of the Monobloc chair typology extends far beyond its anonymous origins, with established designers and prestigious manufacturers making their own significant contributions to this contested design space. Konstantin Grcic's collaboration with Magis exemplifies this dynamic tension through the Bell Chair (2020), a radical geometric reinterpretation that shares the Monobloc's single-piece ethos while elevating it through die-cast aluminum. This industrial approach maintains the essential DNA of mass production while simultaneously repositioning it within high design discourse. The Bell Chair exists in the same conceptual lineage as the Monobloc but commands a much higher price point, creating a fascinating dialogue between democratic ubiquity and design connoisseurship.
Magis’ Bell Chair, a lightweight, low-cost stackable monobloc chair made of recycled polypropylene. Designer Konstantin Grcic, 2020
Similarly, Vitra's engagement with this typology through exhibitions and collaborations with Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec ("Vegetal") demonstrates how leading manufacturers deliberately play with the tensions inherent in the Monobloc's identity. This design consciously references the humble plastic chair while transforming it through innovative production techniques, superior materials, and the imprimatur of established design houses. This dynamic creates objects that simultaneously honour and critique their mass-market predecessor, existing in a liminal space between accessible design and rarefied collectible. These interventions by design's elite into the most democratic chair typology perfectly encapsulate the ongoing identity crisis within the field – where even the most ubiquitous forms become contested territories for exploration of value, authorship, and cultural significance.
Vegetal Chair, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, 2010
On this, at the opposite end of the design spectrum sits Marc Newson's Lockheed Lounge—a limited edition piece (just 10 units plus artist proofs) with one example selling for over £2 million at auction. Where the Monobloc is plastic, disposable, and manufactured for the masses, the Lockheed Lounge is a handcrafted fiberglass shell clad in hammered aluminium sheets fixed with blind rivets, each taking up to six months to produce. It gained cultural prominence when featured in Madonna's 1993 'Rain' music video and has since become a paradigmatic example of design as art.
The Lockheed Lounge balances between technically functional furniture and collectible art object, with critics debating whether it belongs more to the realm of sculpture than design. Its experimental form, uncomfortable visually and functionally, combines fluid curves inspired by chaise longues with an aerodynamic aesthetic reminiscent of airplane fuselages, representing Newson's artistic approach to materials and processes that deliberately blurs disciplinary boundaries. This design is, in truth pretty useless and at the same time an object of desire and extreme value. It in itself is a symbol for how people who dont design value design, perceive design and assign an identity and cost to the field.
Madonna Magic Music Video, 1993
Beyond the Monobloc: Other Chairs with Contested Identities
The identity crisis in chair design isn't limited to these polar extremes. Consider the Organic chair, designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen in 1940. Created for MOMA's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition, this chair was conceptually revolutionary but technologically impossible to mass-produce at the time. It existed in a curious design limbo—awarded first prize yet unable to be manufactured due to technological limitations and the interruption of World War II. The few prototypes fell into obscurity until Vitra revived the design in 2004, over sixty years after its conception and long after both designers had passed away.
The Organic chair lived a split existence—celebrated as innovative yet unrealised, influential yet largely unseen, designed by masters yet never produced in their lifetimes. Its journey reminds me; ideas conceived in one place but only coming to fruition in another, much later context still have value. There's something poignant about designs that outpace their technological moment, waiting decades for the world to catch up.
Organic Chair by Best friends Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, 1941
Gaetano Pesce's experimental chairs provide another fascinating example of identity crises through furniture design. His 1984 Pratt Chair experiment involved casting nine chairs from the same mould with slight variations in resin formulation. The resulting chairs ranged from completely collapsing to being too rigid for comfortable seating. Through this experiment, Pesce questioned the fundamental boundary between art and functional design, suggesting the difference was merely "a slight alteration in chemical formula".
This premonition of the tenuousness of design categories in general—how the slightest modification can transform an object from one classification to another. The line between success and failure, function and dysfunction, can be remarkably thin. Pesce's earlier Up chair from 1968 similarly embodies contradictory elements—compressed into a flat disk for shipping yet expanding into a bulbous armchair when unpacked. Beyond this formal transformation, he integrated political commentary into the design, with the ottoman resembling a ball and chain to symbolise women as prisoners of prejudice. This multi-layered identity—functional object, political statement, technological innovation—creates a complex design persona that defies simple categorisation.
50th anniversary edition, B&B Italia Up chair in a beige- and green-stripes by Gaetano Pesce, 1968