A chair for the world

The Vitra Design Museum dedicates a four months exhibition to the most widely used piece of furniture in the world: the white plastic chair. As the quintessential example of a mass consumer product, “Monobloc – A Chair for the World” tells the story of this everyday item, portraying forerunners, variants and reinterpretations, while also examining the cultural history of an object that has made its mark on the contemporary world.

  As it has spread around the world, the Monobloc chair has come to represent the ambivalence of today’s consumer society. The plastic chair is the epitome of an affordable – and thus democratic – piece of furniture. At the same time, it does not meet sustainability criteria and exemplifies the global mass consumption of uniform products. Beginning in the 1950s, new plastics technology made it possible to fabricate chairs by moulding or pressing the material into the desired shape in a single production step. The moniker Monobloc is derived from this simple production method and the plain appearance of the resulting furniture pieces. 

The first mass-produced models include the Panton Chair (1958–68), conceived by Danish designer Verner Panton, the Bofinger Chair (1964–68) by German architect Helmut Bätzner, and the chair Selene (1961–68), a creation by Italian designer Vico Magistretti. In 1972, the French engineer Henry Massonnet took these predecessors as a starting point for the design of his so-called Fauteuil 300, which is regarded as the archetype of the inexpensive plastic chair. By improving the efficiency of the manufacturing process, Massonnet was able to reduce the duration of the entire production cycle to less than two minutes. From the 1980s onward, more and more companies brought similar models onto the market.

from 17 March to 18 June 2017
Monobloc. A Chair for the World
Vitra Schaudepot
Charles-Eames-Straße 2, Weil am Rhein