Chair for Daydreamers

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interview excerpt from www.post.fm

What was the inspiration for “Chair for Daydreaming”?

This is a competition entry I submitted and won at the Nagoya Design Do! International Design Competition 2000, which eventually helped me end my full-time employment. That was during the turn of millennium and they wanted a design that best represented the concept of hope for the future. I could feel it in my bones that this is the perfect brief for me.
Most of the ideas for this work came from my reading. I was one of those disgruntled and angsty twenty-something dabbling with the existentialist work of Camus and Satre. One of the books that influenced my thinking was Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It chronicles his experience as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, where he witnessed that those inmates that clung on to a sense of meaning in their lives, are able to withstand adverse circumstances, those without, simply willed themselves to death. I wanted a chair that signifies this core sense of meaning.

The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell helped to transform the initial meaning of the chair. He wrote about happiness as something that should be projected outwards and not just inwards. We may never find complete sense of happiness if we are constantly satisfying our own self-interest. This is one maxim which I have since try adhere to. I also see a parallel between the concept of happiness and hope, in the sense, there are not only personal aspirations but collective dreams as well.

Share with us the design process for “Chair for Daydreaming”.

The “Chair for Daydreamers” is not about creating a new form. I was envisioning a conducive environment where people are able to ponder in solitude, a series of isolated tall chairs among aloof clouds in a landscape was a vague idea I had.



So I plugged the archetype of a lifeguard chair, which I wanted for a high vantage point, from its usual context. I lopped off its hind legs for a more precarious look and structural tension. I want the ascension to the high chair to be a leap of faith. I have also tapered the chair towards the sky for a perspective play and somehow that was interpreted as a religious intention. A little detail goes into increasing the height of the first step to signify taking a bold first step in chasing a dream.



As I look back at the creation, I felt that it gave a very ‘self-indulgent existential’ feel to it, not exactly an appropriate message for the competition. What Bertrand Russell wrote resonated in my mind, which eventually changed the configuration of the chairs. The end result is a more optimistic view of the future that embraces a sense of collective hope among individuals.