Backside 
3 September 2007 Side Effect Chair 24 July 2006 Arnoldone
13 September 2007 Barbapapa in Vienna 
7 August 2006 Sonet Butterfly 
16 August 2006 Plank Rocker 
03 June 2006 Hands On 
27 September 2006 Charles and Ply 
28 July 2006 Ghost 
12 September 2007 Lap-dog
27 July 2006 Two-some 
14 July 2006 Ply on Ply 
20 July 2005 Cathedra Rassa 
4 August 2006 Jules with Friend
5 August 2006 Philippe Fantasique
15 September 2007 Plastic-fly
11 September 2007 Achilles’s Bicicletta
21 September 2006 Darth Vador
8 September 2007 Leg-o
14 September 2007 Olympia
2 August 2006 Multiple Choice
17 September 2007 Painters Mate
18 May 2007 Bare Light
23 September 2006 Ch’Air No 9 Chair
19 July 2006 Mono Suede
03 March 2005 Aradson
21 September 2007 Arne Cubista
9 September 2007

100 Chairs in 100 Days

The Process of Making One Hundred Chairs by Martino Gamper

I didn’t make one hundred chairs just for myself or even in an effort to rescue a few hundred unwanted chairs from the streets. 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. Each new chair had to be unique, that’s what kept me working toward the elusive one-hundredth chair.

I collected discarded chairs from London streets (or more frequently, friends’ homes) over a period of about two years. My intention was to investigate the potential of creating useful new chairs by blending together the stylistic and structural elements of the found ones. The process produced something like a three-dimensional sketchbook, a collection of possibilities. I wanted to question the idea of there being an innate superiority in the one-off and used this hybrid technique to demonstrate the difficulty of any one design being objectively judged The Best. I also hope my chairs illustrate — and celebrate — the geographical, historical and human resonance of design: what can they tell us about their place of origin or their previous sociological context and even their previous owners? For me, the stories behind the chairs are as important as their style or even their function.

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? The approach is elastic, highlighting the importance of contextual origin and enabling the creative potential of random individual elements spontaneously thrown together. The process of personal action that leads towards making rather than hesitating. Taken from the book 100 Chairs in 100 Days, published by Dent-De-Leone, 2007.

Photography ©Martino Gamper & åbäke