"What's the world's most famous chair? One of those curvy Thonet café chairs? Mies van der Röhe's elegant Barcelona chair? Verner Panton's sexy S-shaped Panton chair? The electric chair? A throne?
Wrong. It's neither an icon from the design history books, nor a symbol of political power, but one of the cheap plastic chairs that you can buy for a few euros, and spot just about everywhere, usually in white. Like most truly ubiquitous objects, they're so familiar that we barely notice them, but more people all over the world have seen — and sat on — one of those chairs, than any other.
Just think about how many there are in schools, bars, hospitals, parks, beaches, sports stadiums and retirement homes. And how often they appear as props in global dramas. Floating in the debris of the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Seating thousands of people at Cuban political rallies. Lurking in the hideout where Saddam Hussein was captured, and in Abu Ghraib prison."
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