The author is sitting in Tadao Ando’s Dream Chair. Photograph by Adrian Gaut, via Architect magazine;
In his new book, the author Witold Rybczynski has pulled off a deft trick. Now I Sit Me Down, due out next month, feels loose and relaxed, as well as grounded and authoritative. In a way, it’s like a good chair. The book, a sweeping look, rendered in concise breezy prose, blends first person accounts of the author’s experience, with the cultural history of the chair, from the ancient Greeks, to the Eames and beyond. Here’s an edited version of our conversation from last week.
"“A chair is only finished when someone sits in it.” The person using the chair is always part of the equation. A chair is not a sculpture—or, at least, it shouldn’t be." Hans Wegner