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Our Monthly FavouritesRe-Discovering Classics
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Monobloc Chair, Unknown, 20th Century“You’ll find it at the corner cafe, on a terrace in Bombay, in the souk in Marrakech, on your balcony, outside your elementary school, in your neighbor's lawn, at your in-laws' house, of course, and probably even in a closet at the Vatican” ELLE, “The Sentimental Story Behind Monobloc”
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This chair, qualified by many as the most used piece of furniture in the world first appeared during the mid 20th century. If everyone knows of it, many don’t know much about it. Till this day no one knows who actually designed it and when…Defined as the quintessential example of mass production and consumerism, with more than a billion sold in Europe, it all trickled down from the concept of making a piece of furniture from a single piece of a material. If some think that its unprecedented popularity is the proof of flawless design, many disagree. For example, it was banned from public spaces in the city of Basel, Switzerland from 2008-2017 to “preserve the beauty of the cityscape.” |
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12 Angry Men (1957), Sidney Lumet The infamous film Twelve Angry Men is directed by Sidney Lumet and inspired by Reginald Rose’s 1954 play. This poignant huis clos reunites 12 jurors whose duties are to deliberate on a man’s guilt during the McCarthy era. Every element during the trial seems to condemn the defendant, whoever, one man succeeds, slowly, to make all the other jurors change their mind. Working as a mirror of each juror’s own biases, preconceptions and stereotypes, this film is groundbreaking for its time, denouncing the American 1950’s broken juridical system and its resulting injustice, which is still relevant today. |
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The Sacco Chair, 1968, Piero GattiIntended for the “relaxed non-comformist” and the free spirited, Peiro Gatti’s Sacco Chair is the predecessor of the now millions of bean bag chairs that are currently flooding the market. At the pinnacle of the 1970s “at home” comfortable aesthetic, Gatti, alongside Franco Teodoro and Cesare Paolini decided to create a chair which was “as flexible as possible, which could adapt to different situations…different physical structures” (Gatti). The surprisingly complex design was highly informed by mordern day technology, first filled with air, then water, the designers eventually discovered polyester which was chosen for the final design. It was featured in the 1969 Paris Furniture Fair. |
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City Lights, (1931), Charlie Chaplin City Lights is a 1931 film directed by Charlie Chaplin. This comedy-drama romance, in appearance, unfolds the life of a tramp that falls in love with a blind young woman. This silent film turns out to be quite provocative as well as subversive for its time, although this is achieved through implicit means and hidden symbolisms. It contains circuitous homosexual references and expresses Chaplin’s aversion for the arrival of talking pictures, as he firmly believed watching a film ought to be experienced without speaking words. The challenge was to communicate the film’s entire message only through the very “language” of silent film, aiming for universal identification. |
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The Componibili, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, 1967This iconic storage unit, designed in 1967 by Anna Castelli Ferrieri for Kartell marks a shift in the use of plastic in the furniture design industry. Indeed, it was very avant-garde to use ABS plastic injection moulding. ABS plastic is a polymer that can be shaped using heat without compromising its quality, making this piece extremely durable. Componibili translate in english to “modular” alluding to the piece’s ability to be stacked on top of each other, adapting to the space they are put in. Conceived by the first woman to ever graduate in architecture from the university Politecnico Di Milano, the Componibili is a globally celebrate unit that represents a shift in the furniture design world. |
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Contempt (1963), Jean-Luc GodardContempt portrays Paul Javal, a screenwriter, torn between a greedy producer (he operates as the embodiment of the forfeiture of cinema according to Godard’s view) asking him to rewrite director Fritz Lang’s scenario of Homer’s Odyssey. Lang represents an artist still passionate about making film for art’s sake. The film explores in constant parallelism art and life, echoing writer Oscar Wilde’s idea that life imitates art. Although this film is a masterpiece, its worldly celebrated filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most important figures of the French New Wave, is worshiped and his reputation as well as this constructed godlike figure are still widely applauded. In spite of his undeniable genius, it is now important to acknowledge that-and this is valid for other filmmakers of that period-he would create this untouchable and self-made intellectual, without acknowledging any form of recognition to the people he would collaborate with, especially his muses that would get the main roles of his films for a limited period only, as he was dating them, before leaving them and going on with a new pretty obsession. |
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