When we see images of disasters caused by climate change — floods, storms, devastated landscapes — one object appears again and again: the monobloc chair. White, plastic, stackable, with a universal design.
Project Name: Watching the Chaos
Studio Name: luzinterruptus
It’s one of the most widely used pieces of furniture in the world. Its simple, affordable form has led to it being produced in the millions, used in nearly every country. We see it in gardens, terraces, bars, patios, porches — and above all, in the most modest homes. It’s a quiet symbol of globalization: the same object found in vastly different contexts. In that sense, it’s not unlike climate change — a global force, borderless, visible everywhere, and harshest where resources are few.
That’s why, in so many post-disaster photos, these chairs are always there — half-buried in mud, floating in ruin, embedded in the damaged landscape.
We wanted to work with that image. To use something extremely familiar to speak about something we can no longer treat as distant or abstract.
The result will be an illuminated sculpture made of monobloc chairs. Its form is not fixed — it adapts to the space. Sometimes it stretches along a street, as if swept there by a current. Sometimes it rises, precarious and frozen mid-collapse, in the middle of a square. The chairs will be tangled, leaning, piled up with no apparent logic — as if thrown there by a storm, still standing by inertia… or miracle.
All chairs will be rented locally and left unaltered for reuse. They’ll be secured with cable ties and wire, ensuring stability without damage. Hidden within, cold LED spotlights will flicker and pulse irregularly, projecting animated shadows that enhance the tension of the piece.
In contrast, rows of perfectly aligned monoblocs will face the sculpture, also lit from below, casting sharp shadows — a quiet place to sit and watch.
As always, we work with what already exists. With what’s nearby.
This is a place from which to witness chaos — illuminated, flickering, seemingly on the verge of collapse… but not quite. No climax, no spectacle, no catastrophe. Just a pause. A space to look, to think — or simply drift in the fragile beauty of controlled disorder, on a calm evening somewhere in the first world.
