This Is Not A Chair — on sitting, movement and play
Thesis Faculty:
Clarinda Mac Low, Namreta Kumar, Melanie Crean, Loretta WolozinWhat happens when a chair stops being a chair that speaks in imperatives? This project traces the chair's transformation from symbol of power to instrument of optimization and control. The design exploration creates a permission - permission to sit wrong, move freely, and rediscover human body's urge to play.
“It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.”
Donald Woods Winnicott, Playing and Reality
This Is Not A Chair begins with a simple observation: the chair has always told the body what to do. From ancient thrones to ergonomic office seating, the history of the chair is a history of innovation but also instructions, about who has power, how the body should be held, and who deserves to be comfortable.
The project takes the form of a photobook and an original furniture object. The book includes photography on ways of sitting, traces the chair from symbol of authority to instrument of productivity, and asks why the body’s natural impulse toward movement, play, and exploration has been so systematically designed out.
The design exploration starts with an open form, and asks what the body will discover in it. It has some known answers and an unknown number of others. Every person who sits in it, rocks with it, flips it, climbs it, drapes over it, adds to the list.
Don’t forget to play!
