Your playlist, your guilty-pleasure movie, your shoes—everything says something about who you are. But what about... the way you sit?
In his project Cross Cultural Chairs, designer Matteo Guarnaccia explores how your culture and social environment determine the way we sit and what your chair looks like.
For his project, Guarnaccia traveled to the eight most populous regions in the world over the course of eight months: Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Indonesia, China, India, Russia and Nigeria. In each country, he designed a chair that reflects how the people there sit and live.
For each chair, Guarnaccia worked with local makers and suppliers. The materials, colours and shapes were drawn from the place itself, giving each country its own distinctive chair. This chair from Mexico bursts with colour and flexibility.
In this chair, leather has been replaced with woven wire fencing—a reference to borders, control and politics. The chair chafes, just as former president Jair Bolsonaro’s policies did for many people.
The series was presented at Milan Design Week 2021, where Guarnaccia explained how each chair carries a cultural narrative.
Each chair was photographed in the country where it was made, with distinctive fabrics as a backdrop.
