28 JUNE - JULY 2019
W
hat’s in a chair? Ask Matteo Guarnaccia,
and you are bound to view this humble
piece of furniture in a totally new light.
The Barcelona-based Sicilian designer,
founder and promoter of Cross
Cultural Chairs (CCC), a non-profit research project that is
currently investigating the anthropology of chairs and how
people sit around the world, sees it as a cultural marker.
To this end, Guarnaccia is travelling the world designing
unique varieties, one each in eight countries — Mexico,
Brazil, Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Russia and Nigeria —
collaborating with local design studios and craftsmen along
the way. This humble object, he understands, is capable of
revealing details of an entire society and its people: how
tall they are, what manufacturing processes they use, what
materials they have at their disposal, what their tastes and
interests in architecture and technology are, and so on....
Guarnaccia’s eight chairs will eventually be exhibited at
the Design Museum of Barcelona (and later in Shanghai
and Milan) together with a documentary and 300-page
book on the project. His initiative was mainly financed by
a crowdfunding campaign and supported by IED Barcelona,
ADI-FAD Barcelona as well as Amsterdam-based NGO,
Architecture In Development, which put him in contact with
social communities, architects and design studios.Guarnaccia is folded into a white plastic chair at the
National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai. His Indian
model stares him in the face. “Representing a country in one
chair is a difficult exercise, and particularly so when one
considers the complexity of a country like India,” he says. He
had help, of course. “I was looking for someone who took
into consideration the cultural aspect during the creative
process, and so I contacted (design studio) sP+a. Together
with (principal architect) Sameep Padora, we decided to
involve (furniture designer) Ajay Shah of Rubberband. It
was nice to analyse ‘Indianness’ through objects, with them.”
Speaking of the inspiration behind his design, Guarnaccia
expresses, “I was impressed by the CH-4, a German chair
that was introduced to India in the ’50s as a result of
President Nehru and Le Corbusier’s common vision of a
modern India. This was later brought by Godrej to every
office in the country. This chair has nothing typically Indian
about it, but every Indian recognises it as an Indian chair.
Both Sameep and I thought that was an interesting starting
point, and so, we reached out to skilled artisans from the
chaotic Chor Bazaar area of the city.” He adds that while the
intention of CCC was to not fall into the trap of stereotypes
during the design process, he recognised that textiles form
an important part of the cultural heritage of India and hence
decided to represent this through the traditional weavingABOVE, LEFT AND RIGHT: EVERYDAY CHAIRS IN MUMBAIMATTEO GUARNACCIA MATTEO GUARNACCIAMatteo Guarnaccia, founder of the research project Cross Cultural
Chairs, wonders what this innocuous piece of furniture can reveal
about changing societies. Shirin Mehta reports on those that he is
designing as part of this latest undertaking