Original review: https://designsurvivor.tumblr.com/post/159267804995/what-ive-got-chairless-chair
Chairless chair is a type of exoskeleton invented by Noonee company for reducing the load workers backs suffer during factory work. The secret of its desirability seems to lie in how unattractive and unaesthetic it is. It is plain, mundane, almost entirely monochrome. The whole apparatus is an ode to functionalism. Even the models using it in the ads wear blank monochrome clothes; their faces or other personalizing body features are cropped out or absent. That makes an observer focus on the chairless chair itself, namely its technical potential, safety, and health gains offered. Finally, the rigidness of the shapes of the product makes one forget about comfort, but focus on its stability and effectiveness, and thus desire the chair – in the “driest” meaning of desire – because of those benefits.
Original review fixated on chair’s effects on the workers’ experience, while I tried to uncover the ethos of mental image evoked by the advertisement of the chair.
