What is a Chair — Anna Lazzaron

Ask any furniture designer what the most iconic product in their field is, and chances are you’ll hear “the chair” mentioned more than once. This one object has been reinterpreted in countless shapes, materials and sizes, imagining its use in different cultures and spaces across history and the globe. However, there is one phenomenon that today unites many of these chairs in a way that almost no designer intended: being repurposed as a makeshift storage unit for our daily outfits, for those clothes resting in limbo, not quite clean, not yet dirty.

This kind of chair, from now on referred to as the Misfit Chair, has become a furniture staple in many bedrooms. It is curious to see how this simple habit has expanded into everyone’s private spaces, reinterpreting the use of a such a basic object. In Italian, the word for chair is “sedia” which derives from the verb “sedersi”, to sit. What does it mean for a chair to exist if no one is sitting on it? Is it even still the same object, or a new blob with a confused identity?

In 1999, French sociologist Bruno Latour presented the concept of scripting, which explains that objects are built with a “script”, an internal narrative written by the designer that guides human interaction. These scripts imply specific behaviours and roles: a book, for example, is “scripted” to be read.

In a cultural context where many of us frequently move from one temporary space to another, the presence of a few messy clothes on a chair becomes a subtle declaration of ownership, disrupting the sterility of rental apartments and affirming one’s presence, rather than merely intruding in a landlord’s flat. It is the reason why often the first instinct we have when entering a perfectly arranged hotel room, is to throw our personal belongings all over it, claiming the space as our own, even when it’s just for one night. The chaos of everyday life, manifested in a slightly dishevelled room, is a rebellion against the impersonal nature of order, reminding us that the essence of a home is not in immaculate interiors but in the warm vulnerability of our disarrayed corners, in the stories told through scattered belongings.

Regardless of whether its use is temporary or long-term, the act of laying clothes and miscellaneous items on Misfit Chairs every evening makes people gradually build a relationship with this strange object, almost like a companion holding the residues of daily life and the choices made regarding one’s personal style and appearance. Misfit Chairs serve as quiet canvases, constantly re-painted in an endless cycle of being piled up and emptied. The story they tell is captured only in its last snapshot, in the hasty, tired moment in which the clothes are taken off - the final act of a daily performance. By hosting these stories they invite us to take a closer look into our journeys, in an informal archive of fabric mapping out a layered emotional landscape of our lives and experiences.

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