Strewn across various patios and gardens around the world is one of the most common designs and an excellent example of mass consumerism. What has commonly been referred to as the ‘white plastic garden chair’ is really called the ‘Monobloc Chair’, named for its manufacture technique of injection moulding polypropylene into one simple shape. It is uncertain who first created it although the names of many famous industrial designers, including Joe Columbo and Vico Magistretti have emerged over the years, but as no patent was ever filed, millions of various iterations of it exist today.
The chairs typically only cost £2.30 to produce so what was once considered a great feat of product design- to create furniture from one piece of material – has since become an affordable and ubiquitous background presence that is able to exist in the slums of Delhi and the back gardens of Belgravia. They have become what is known as a ‘context-free object’ – so globalized that seeing it in a photograph offers you no clues about the location and time period of that photo. It exists throughout every culture and for some, these chairs may be simple disposable pieces of plastic that they can temporarily use and throw away along with other disposable items. For others, they may be indispensable and valuable objects that they could not afford to ever part with.
Having such a cheap, plastic item permeating society in such a way of course has its issues when it comes to disposal, with millions of them sitting in landfill across the world and the object as a whole being met by harsh opposition. But this says a lot more about society than it does about the design itself - in the poorest countries, these chairs are commonly repaired after breaking. The chair isn’t inherently evil, nor are the people who use them. Indeed, it is unfair to accuse those who can afford little else of damaging the environment when they were not presented with a choice to do otherwise and when the real issue is those who treat such items as temporary. The Monobloc has become a perfect example of what happens when Western society begins to leech into other cultures, but not before Westerners suddenly change their minds about what is considered ‘ethical design’.
As we don’t know who designed the original Monobloc, we can’t ask them what their intention for it was. Was it simply meant to be an experiment in technique to see if a chair could indeed be made in one piece of material? Or was it an exclusively designed item from an exciting new material to sell to the wealthy? Or maybe they were aiming all along to create an item that transcends culture to become a universal norm? For this reason, whether they (or we) like it or not, the white plastic garden chair is quite possibly one of the most timeless and important pieces of design out there- and for once, it is good design that everyone can afford.
Morven
References (and interesting reads!):
https://www.design-museum.de/en/exhibitions/detailpages/monobloc-a-chair-for-the-world.html
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bn5e4m/white-plastic-chairs-are-taking-over-the-world-128
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