Stühle der Macht

Weil am Rhein, Germany

Photo © Roland Schmid/Vitra Design Museum

Photo © ZMIK

Photo © Roland Schmid/Vitra Design Museum

Interior Designers: ZMIK

Year: 2018

Within the chairs collection at Vitra Schaudepot hierarchies emerge. The exhibition shows us how closely the chair has always been related to the demonstration of power. Every chair gets its throne – 20 objects from the museum’s collection are placed on oversized pedestals. Following the traces of Alessandro Mendini's iconic action around the Lassù chair or in the moving power between chess pieces.

In tension between object, space and image, these elevated chairs take a seat in the narrow passages between the stock shelves – in front of images, showing spaces, which in turn show off exactly such chairs of power. In these interiors and the depicted figures of power within politics and pop culture, one sees reflected the codes of power and the role of design in its translation over time.