Folding chairs: A history - Curbed

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Practical furniture everywhere, not just eyes

No one told you that the metal folding chair paved the way to sober. People will talk about meetings and steps, enlightenment and salvation. But few people mention that you often sit on cold, foldable industrial steel.

Last year I found my church basement spacious and familiar on a slate-grey early spring night, just like the night I went back to school when I was a child. I remember being defeated and feeling nervous. My anxious eyes made direct contact to avoid strangers looking back at me.

In this situation, when I lost my balance and felt upset, I instinctively looked at the first inanimate object I could find. In this case, it is an empty folding chair.

Folding chairs have an incredible ability to keep the people in any room equal. When everyone sits on the same chair and talks about the same things, there will be an inherent commonality. For the first time-when I was sitting side by side and side by side with more alcoholics, I realized that the struggle that I seemed impossible to accomplish was not single. The faces and stories in these meetings change every week, but I quickly learned that the metal folding chair, the feeling of unity is a heavy thing.

I once believed that folding chairs were cold by-products produced by the military or government for some ultra-tactical purposes. But after a few months of recovery, I learned that, at least in the United States, the design of modern folding chairs centers on the community.

In 1911,

Used in schools and churches. Alexander's design even has a book holder for people in the back seat, this chair is perfect for study, worship or chorus.

In 1947, World War II veteran, inventor and inventor Fredric Arnold (Fredric Arnold) further simplified the design and made aluminum fiber folding chairs more suitable for mass production. Arnold's design is rougher and stronger than today's metal folding chairs, but its guiding principle is complete: transform any inconspicuous space into a stage that can support a group of people together.

Ten years later, Arnold's company, Frederick Arnold of Brooklyn, produced more than 14,000 of these portable chairs per day. Folding chairs quickly became a must-have in houses, schools, churches and community centers around the world.

Folding chairs are relatively inconspicuous fixtures in daily life. They are one of the objects we have interacted with for many years, but may not have received any real attention or thinking. All industrial folding chairs look the same. The chairs in the basement of that Brooklyn church look like my high school chairs, my childhood church and almost all the other folding chairs I had to sit on.

When I heard people talking about alcoholism and sober experiences, I found myself sitting there every week until I never thought about it again. During the months of recovery, when I was struggling with the 12 steps of AA, I found that I wanted a sober path. This approach is not uniform and more personal to me.

In the industrial design boom of the middle of the last century, designers of that era began to use the concept of folding chairs, elevating them from simple origins to geometric curves, high-grade woods and smooth finishes. The famous German architect Egon Eiermann designed a 1950s folding chair in beech wood, which is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Decades later, architect David Chipperfield created

, Is a noble, fiberglass reinforced version that you can buy in today's high-end decoration boutiques. Even Ikea, the affordable furniture giant, offers its own features on folding chairs.

with

Variety of styles, colorful colors, aesthetically pleasing, enough to win the favor of global fashion homes.

This modern folding chair has surpassed the original version, feeling more personalized and better designed. Designers know not to treat original concepts as rigid. Instead, as the greater cultural sense of design changes, they push it forward, and when they see a desire for folding chairs, this folding chair is unique to people’s personal tastes and preferences of. Finding the way to soberness can have a similar quality of "making yourself yourself".

In my previous attempts to quit drinking, I learned how long I have been sober to guide me. I have tried many ways to curb drinking: rejection, self-improvement, personal discovery, new hobbies-whatever you want. I eventually forced myself to attend the AA meeting. I'm not sure what will happen, but I find myself listening to the passionate stories of those who change. There are equal doses of warm, friendly and rigid personality; enough to make you melt in a chair and want to get out of the room.

Just like many other people find sober functions outside of the multi-step process, just like a designer chooses his own work from the original folding chair design to create his own version, I decided that my sense of sobriety will also be my own. Way to reflect.

Although I did not follow the 12-step plan or look for sponsors, I still occasionally attend meetings: I sit, listen and rarely speak. But sitting in that folding chair to absorb the story is more for me than I thought. I will walk out of the room with a new force. This prompted me to be open to the struggle of drinking, to express opinions that I could not express, and it made me involuntary. Moreover, the more time I open to friends and family, the more control I have in this struggle.

When I saw folding chairs in my daily life in offices, cafes, and hidden in the corners of art galleries, I couldn't help but think of how terrifying and humble it was when I stepped onto that short staircase for the first time. I can close my eyes and imagine that that big room is filled with small foldable furniture and friendly people. I can still imagine how the chairs are arranged in four rows to form an open square so that everyone faces each other. These details, such as the metal folding chair, are intertwined with my sober memory.

Last year, I have been thinking about sobriety and folding chairs, and how these two require that design and discipline can be as unique or unified as you wish. You can follow the blueprint (measurements, angles, books, steps), or break it yourself. Ultimately, this is about what works for you. But it turns out that designing your own destiny can be a powerful catalyst for change.