397 Chairs

What is a chair? More than 300 designers, architects, and furniture makers from around the world attempted to answer that question when they submitted chairs to an exhibition sponsored by The Architectural League of New York in 1986. Made from all manners of materials--steel, fabric, wood, plastic, aluminum, fiberglass--and running from serious solitary utilitarian seats to whimsical models, the range and variety of the designer's answers, all 397 of them illustrated here, are truly stunning. What is a chair? More than 300 designers, architects, and furniture makers from around the world attempted to answer that question when they submitted chairs to an exhibition sponsored by The Architectural League of New York in 1986. Made from all manners of materials--steel, fabric, wood, plastic, aluminum, fiberglass--and running from serious solitary utilitarian seats to whimsical models, the range and variety of the designer's answers, all 397 of them illustrated here, are truly stunning.