Above, a student group at Istanbul´s Marmara University who under the direction of Professor Meltem Eti Proto took on the monobloc plastic chair earlier this year and redesigned it in quite different ways. Interesting project that brings up various questions.

First is “irony”. Many – though by far not all – artistic statements and remixes making use of the mono are somehow ironic. That thing is just so huge and coherent that it is not easy to approach it deadly serious. What would you enhance in an otherwise perfect object given the limitation that actually making an improved monobloc chair would exceed mostly any reasonable budget? So you tend to resort to ironizing it. One of the Istanbul takes is real funny, because it kind of double ironizes the chair.

Right is the Campana brothers Favela chair, manufactured by Edra since 2003 and available through Moss e.g. at US$ 4,430 a piece. I love that one, even if no plastic at all involved. It ironically translates pragmatic makeshift design that is to be found in poorer households worldwide into an upmarket furniture object. On the other hand it is deliberately going far over the top since no favela dweller would bother to cut and nail and glue these little pieces of wood into a chair.
Left is a chair from the Istanbul project. Much rougher, less balanced – and far quicker made. It´s just these wooden sticks mounted on a monobloc chair. The real favela chair – the monobloc – re-emerges as an ironic quote of an ironic quote of favela makeshift design. Boundaries finally blurred to utter confusion. Great job!

Here´s another pair though that made me think about the limits of all these mono-works that are constantly being created since about 2006 when Brian Jungen, Front Design and ff started hitting the media big time.

Again on the right-hand side an object by London-based Studio Ball (why is my Safari giving me that malware warning?), and to the left one from Istanbul. I sometimes think, mostly everything is said and done about the monobloc. Is there any statement out there that hasn´t been made, any parameter of the object not laid bare and thus intensified to blatancy? I know this sounds bit like this guy who a few decades ago quipped that more or less everything had been invented and we could close down the patent offices, or like any other doomsayer – but still. I guess, we would better return to the monobloc´s quality when we want to make truly original statements. Irony may be over; two thirds at least.

There´s of course two favs – beside the favela remake – I have from the Istanbul set. Right Yavuz Inan´s take who won the group´s internal competition.

Both are not actually practicing what I just preached, and both have cousins in other statements, but I still like them. Wonder I shall mail some guys I know who teach design and suggest to do a mono project at their departments over here? Could be interesting to see, what that would turn out..

Credits: All Istanbul photos taken from Picasa, photographed by Öğr.Gör.Emre İkizler. Favela Chair photo from the Moss website, Studio Ball from the studio´s page. There´s a blog post in Turkish that drew my attention to the project; here´s some Google translate link to it.

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