GROUND PROXIMITY CONTACT SYSTEM – Connect with the earth, sit in mindfulness
Nicola Marchiori
Student
Nicola Marchiori Academic staff
Riccardo Berrone Francesco Alessandro Faccin Ingrid Kofler Course
Sit-In Program
BA Major Design Semester
2023/24 WS GROUND PROXIMITY CONTACT SYSTEM
This chair design is a tribute to the visionary creations of Ettore Sottsass, specifically his iconic work “METAFORE”. The chair is an embodiment of the connection between human and nature, as it requires the user to ground it to the earth through a system of tie rods. Assembling this chair is not simply a task, but an experience, a performance that brings the user in close proximity with the earth and its raw essence. The chair’s design is a call to action, to slow down and engage with the present moment, to reconnect with the earth and ourselves.
A project made in the course
Sit-In
The chair is a complex object for several reasons. It has to comply with very intense structural forces and tensions, which is why it has always been considered a design challenge standing between aesthetics and statics. But the aspect that makes the chair truly unique as a category is its ability to represent times and styles, photographing a given historical moment much more effectively than other typologies of product.The chair in the last Century has ben assumed as a manifesto of a political idea, a vision about the future, and many designers have used it as an excuse to tell a story or activate a debate. In this semester, students will have to design a “seating machine” that is the embodiment of their own thinking related to processes, transportation needs, economic and production sustainability… The epilogue of the design path will be an event/round table open to everyone where students will have to debate, supporting their design choices in order to activate a constructive dialogue related to the great urgent issues of this era.
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