STOOL SURVEY

“I created this stool in my first semester of studying architecture, in 2018. I had the stone at home, it is from the Caucasian mountains in Georgia, where I’m from. I found it on the side of the road, which was blocked, when we had to get out of the bus we were on. I saw the stone and took it with no plan for what to do with it. When I brought it with me to Berlin, I had no idea it would one day be part of a stool. My mom used to bring soil from Georgia to Germany, so when she was homesick she could touch it and connect with her homeland. When I got the school assignment, I simply took the stone and elevated it to standard seating height (around 45 cm) with the most minimal means. Basalt is created when lava cools. It’s very iron-rich, so when I was building the stool it got this reddish patina because I had to put it in the bathtub so it would soak in some water and make drilling into it easier. It got rusty after that, and more interesting. I liked the contrast between a perfect, artificial, corrosion-resistant material and the very natural, imperfect, oxidized rock. Looking back, it was a very instinctive and naive project.” – Mariami Kurtishvili (Berlin)

“I am interested in the politics of transparency. This piece began with me looking into the status quo of the stool, which led to a strangely standardized typology – one can get it at Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart, you name it. Except for minor variations it’s the identical stool, and it’s invariably made of rubberwood. That led down another rabbit hole. I researched how this ubiquitous stool first appeared on the market and discovered it all went back to a transformation in the latex industry in the 1970s and 80s. Instead of being burnt at the end of their life cycle, rubberwood trees started being kiln-dried and processed into lumber. This widely available new timber product coupled with the demand of big-box stores for low-margin, high-volume furniture led to a design so optimized and generic, any notion of authorship went out of the window. ShadowStool visualizes that logic in stainless steel. At this time, it is not engineered to be usable. It’s about dematerializing an object to expose the infrastructural mechanisms behind it. The things that surround us and we take for granted have a hidden story that I like to unravel. The main challenge was finding the right material to achieve structure while retaining lightness.” — David Andrew Tasman of DVLPR (New York City)

“The name of our stool is a portmanteau of ‘Takefumi’ (Aida, the Japanese architect) and ‘Tabouret.’ We are very interested in the idea of pareidolia, when an anthropomorphic dimension is projected on an inanimate object to suggest it’s alive.We took the proportion of Le Corbusier’s Tabouret stool, inspired by wooden crates that allow you to stick your fingers in to carry them, and combined it with Japanese architecture references, like Kazumasa Yamashita’s Face House in Kyoto. We wanted to do a better version of what Le Corbusier did; his design is still very valid in its simplicity, but we placed the holes differently to imply a human-like expression. The result, which can be rotated or used upright, makes us smile. And it reflects our practice because it builds on history and is simultaneously functional and lighthearted.”
— Mark Lee of Johnston Marklee (Los Angeles/New York City)

“I enjoy very straightforward titles that represent exactly what you see. Karton Hocker means cardboard stool in English, describing the object precisely. It’s a box that we once carried, and now it can carry us. For me the idea comes always first: the narrative and the urge for interaction and surprise. The appearance comes second, and it supports the idea. The biggest challenge was to deform the box without destroying it. I created this stool, but now it will go wherever it wants to be seen — we can only control the lives of our ideas up to a certain point.” — Illya Goldman Gubin (Berlin)

“The stool is a continuation of a research project I’ve been conducting for around twelve years. A fairly unfamiliar material to most people, including myself, carbon fiber is usually subject to intensive processing and costly manufacturing and development techniques. I want to relearn it and take it away from how industry knows it to establish it as a new raw material available for experimentation. To do that, I work with it in a low-tech way. And it turns out carbon fiber really lends itself to it, it’s quite friendly to being treated with an open mind. Its structural integrity is compelling, the fact that it starts out as a soft textile before being encapsulated with a binder. It’s resin, which is also oil-based, that gives carbon fiber form and makes it last. Because I don’t use a mold, things can be different each time, there’s always something new to be explored, no excuse to repeat oneself. It’s a bit radical, escaping the idea of industrial production for a more workshop-like approach. No subjective decisions went into creating the stool. In my opinion, designing a stool should always be a decisive, clear, strict, and straightforward exercise.” — Jonathan Muecke (Minneapolis)

“We reinterpreted a traditional milking chair used in the Netherlands and other places around the world by farmers, who had to go from cow to cow and strapped it around their back with a belt. A normal chair would topple over between the hay and the milk bucket. We liked that pragmatic aspect, but relished the opportunity to play with this source of inspiration. We realized how it was not a normal piece of furniture, but something used primarily for work. That led us to think about the direct relationship between labor and stools. The milking stool’s single leg also stood out, an efficient feature that happens to be great for the user’s posture. Lastly, I was struck by a great historical photograph of two dudes with this type of strap-on seat. The stool had to be simple to assemble and ship, small enough that you could carry it around, and big enough to sit in it. A tongue-in-cheek situation is embedded in the design. You cannot do a serious stool — if you rely on humorlessness as your statement you’re in trouble. But it’s also a functional stool, convenient for gardeners, gentleman farmers, or anyone engaged in any kind of (kinky) labor.” — Florian Idenburg of SO–IL (New York City)

“It all started with aluminum profiles that we had left over from a project; their proportions reminded us of a piece of timber. We used it to create a series based on archetypal German stools. Then the ‘Hocker’ exhibition happened in Berlin, and one of our stools from that series was included. That first version was very focused on proportions and construction. For the New York exhibition we paid more attention to the object’s appearance, trying out a hand-painted wood-grain imitation technique and changing the shape of the legs. The aim was to apply an ornamental surface without being too obvious. Instead we wanted the stool to have character, something whimsical, and evoke certain associations. When deciding what kind of wood to mimic, we picked lacquered walnut because it carries distinct cultural connotations that fit our idea. Rare woods are so expensive and have been so exploited, parts of the world have to import them or simply copy their look. The faux rich exterior also counters the West’s obsession with minimalism. For us, the result is more of a wood stool than if it was actually made of wood. Sometimes a representation is more real than the actual thing. It’s cute but also a bit irritating.” — Daftar (Berlin)

“I made a pillow stack stool from down sleeping pillows. I like using standardized sets in my work. With pillows you have your standard sham, your euro sham, your king sham, the boudoir size and all the corresponding inserts. I bought those, tailored them, and created an internal structure, a rod that goes through the center of all the pillows. The top pillow sits on a plate, so the ones below are protected, which produces the effect that the sitter looks like they’re floating, only the top pillow sinks down. I wanted to recreate the illusion you get in catalogs, where pillows are often advertised in stacks, and to translate that image into a stool that wouldn’t collapse when you sit on it. The plan is to make several sizes. This prototype is the standard stack, but there will also be a euro stack and a king stack. Obviously, unless they’re obsessed with linens or work in a hotel, few people know these things. But I enjoy building off very specific formulas. I think it’s because, as a designer, I’ve had a hard time grappling with making and adding more trash to the world. Using parts that already exist alleviates that a bit. I don’t have to waste material, I can just go on eBay and buy some existing shams. We have created systems for so many things, why not use them in different contexts? The hardest thing was to figure out how to open the pillows carefully to avoid having a million feathers floating around my studio.” — Olivia Vigo (New York City)