“Chairs are important historical artifacts. They can represent the fashion and ethos of a particular moment in time or stand for an epochal idea. They are portraits of their users and reflect the production techniques with which they were created. You can recognize and understand an era – its social structures, its materials, techniques, and fashions – by its chairs. I would go as far as to say that no other everyday object is so multi-faceted.”
“Chair Times” charts a course through an ocean of chairs. In the focus are 125 objects from the Collection of the Vitra Design Museum. Arranged according to their year of production, they illustrate the development from 1807 to the very latest designs straight off the 3D printer, forming a timeline for modern seating design. The film features many people whose vocations involve design and who are experts in the field, such as designers Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec, architects and collectors Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, architect David Chipperfield, Director Emeritus of MAK Vienna/Los Angeles Peter Noever, Mateo Kries, Director of the Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Design Museum curators Amelie Klein, Jochen Eisenbrand and collection curator Serge Mauduit. And your guide through the history of chairs is Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra.
A film by: Heinz Bütler
Production: HOOK Film & Kultur Produktion GmbH in cooperation with the Vitra Design Museum, 2018