Chair Anatomy (collection of six)

In this study ordinary, everyday stacking chairs were reconfigured to ask questions about our relationship to utility, familiarity and perception. The project investigates how reflective design articulated directly through artefacts may be used rhetorically to bring sustainable issues and a revaluing what we already have into critical focus. It comprised of 6 chair re-construction studies using a standard, injection moulded, plastic, shell chair mounted on steel frame. A common and universally familiar chair type found everywhere. Using an experimental method analogous to archaeology, common chair forms metaphorically lost from awareness because of their anonymous ubiquity were subject to a kind of anatomical dissection, deconstruction in order to visually rediscover them. The resulting inventory of parts formed the basis of speculative modification and reassembly. Speculations were rigorously situated within the examined object’s specific nature and function. This strategy generated new, highly visible chair constructs embodying clearly validated, authentic visual narratives. Cross-section cuts and reassemblies re-present in visual narrative, the elegant utility of the generic stacking and linking function