By now the health deficits of sitting all day are so widely studied and well-documented that they're impossible to ignore. Studies show that sitting increases lower back pain, slows our metabolisms, and shortens our life-spans, among a host of other things. Not even daily exercise is enough to offset the damage. What's a health-conscious person to do?
One answer: Eliminate chairs altogether. At the interdisciplinary Dutch design studio RAAAF (Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances), brothers and cofounders Ronald and Erik Rietveld have been studying how radically redesigning the workplace and home might affect how sedentary we are. Their installations The End of Sitting, which debuted in 2014, and Breaking Habits, opening at the Mondriaan Fund for Visual Arts in Amsterdam February 16, present chair-free environments that encourage people to get up and move. As Erik puts it, "As long as there are chairs present, people will sit in them habitually."