THE PIN–UP QUOTE: KONSTANTIN GRCIC

Konstantin Grcic by Lukas Wassmann.

THE PIN–UP QUOTE: KONSTANTIN GRCIC

Each chair can be so different, designing them never ceases to be challenging. We may ask similar questions with every chair: “What is it for?” “What is the location?” “Who is it for?” “Who sits on it?” “And what is a chair, anyway?” But the answers are always new. Of course a chair is a fascinating thing because you come into such direct physical contact with it more than with any other piece of furniture. You may sit at a table, or you’ll open a closet with your hands, but with a chair you have prolonged, direct physical contact. And just think of the many ways we sit in chairs — there’s no one fixed position, but a multitude of different postures. A good chair becomes part of you, it dresses you. There’s a famous test where people rate chairs for comfort, once blindfolded, once not. Their verdicts turn out to be contradictory. Blindfolded, they experience only the physical comfort of the chair. But when they actually see the chair, they let themselves get seduced by its looks. A chair that you find beautiful appears to be more comfortable — it is a psychological thing, it’s not purely rational. These kinds of considerations are what my work revolves around. There’s an infinite, ever-changing potential within those most common, mundane things.

Taken from an interview by Felix Burrichter in PIN–UP 23, Fall Winter 2017/18. The full version of this interview can also be read in PIN–UP 23. Portrait by Lukas Wassmann.