Recession Chair by Tjep

Dutch designers Tjep. have reduced part of a mass produced IKEA chair to a skeletal form to evoke the receding state of the global economy.

One corner of the standard chair has been carefully sanded so that hardly any material remains.

The fragile chair can no longer support the weight of a person as, like the economy, it too is diminished.

Some other chairs worth a look on Dezeen include one weighing 1.3 kilograms and another with a ladder-back reaching into the sky – see all our stories about chairs here.

Here is some text explaining the project from the designers:

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“The furniture you haven’t seen at the Dutch Design Week.”

After visiting the Dutch Design Week two weeks ago, I was struck by how little the design world seems to react to the immanent economic crisis threatening Europe and the world. So here is a little something to make up for my esteemed colleagues. Following up on the XXL chair from 2005 we now present the Recession Chair.

Receding is the act of withdrawing and diminishing. We were interested in exploring the visual impact of receding in relation to a design object. We took an IKEA mass produced chair and started sanding it to the finest possible version. The result is a process where the chair goes from normal, to diminished, to skeleton like. The resulting object is barely functional as it most likely won’t withstand the weight of the person it’s trying to support, much like a society plagued by recession.

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