Martino Gamper began his project 100 Chairs in 100 Days a decade ago when the London-based, Italian furniture designer made a new chair a day for a hundred days by collaging together bits of chairs that he found discarded on the street or in friends’ homes.
Blending found stylistic and structural elements, Gamper generated perverse, poetic, and humorous hybrids that raised both formal and functional questions with sociological and semiological ones. As he puts it, ‘What happens to the status and potential of a plastic garden chair when it is upholstered with luxurious yellow suede?’ The project was all about being creative but within restrictions, such as being limited to materials at hand and the time available, with the requirement that each new chair be unique.
