The chair is of extreme antiquity and simplicity, although for many centuries and indeed for thousands of years it was an article of state and dignity rather than an article of ordinary use. It was not, in fact, until the 16th century that it became common anywhere. The chest, the bench and the stool were until then the ordinary seats of everyday life, and the number of chairs which have survived from an earlier date is exceedingly limited

“The chair” is still extensively used as the emblem of authority in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom and Canada, and in many other settings. Committees, boards of directors, and academic departments all have a chairman. [1]

Well, enough with the history lesson, it’s time to see 20 really creative and modern chair designs that will make you feel bad about your own chair.

1. The Octopus Chair

The artist wanted to be faithful to the animal’s physique and the natural majesty of its movements, therefore Maximo attended to each physical detail of the octopus in order to make the animal the unique protagonist of the whole piece. (Designer: Maximo Riera)

2. The Cut Chair

The “Cut Chair” has only one unbroken leg, and creates an optical illusion that it’s about to fall. However, a plate concealed by a thick carpet allows a robust cantilevered seat. (Designer: Peter Bristol)

3. Pencil Chair

Chair made from hundreds of pencils. (Designer: Anon Pairot)

4. Fish Rocking Chair

Designer has taken soft perishable sardines and found a way to use them as the building material in his most recent project. The individual components have been created through a process of lost wax casting, creating solid aluminum fish from their edible counterparts. (Designer: Tristan Cochrane)

5. Milipede Chair

This arthropodic stool looks like a science experiment that escaped and headed straight for the bar. (Designer: Michael Samoriz)

6. The Empty Chair

For the campaign “The Empty Chair”, designer made the symbolic empty chair, to support Amnesty in their fight for freedom of expression. (Designer: Maarten Baas)

7. Shopping Cart Lounger

“Designer takes the common shopping cart and reapproriates it,transforming it into an object of leisure and design.” [1] (Designer: Mike Bouchet)

8. Chair For Cafe

“The design satisfies both elements of functional and decorative design. The seats appears like a silhouette of a coffee mug, whose handle can be used as a hook for draping a jacket or hanging a bag.” [2] (Designer: Sunhan Kwon)

9. Beautiful Bloom Chair

“Made of deep soft folds of handmade microfibre fabric stitched into a steel base, the chair is available in Red, Moss Green, Light Green & Yellow. This lounge chair will make you feel like fairytale Thumbelina in a beautiful flower.” [3] (Designer: Kenneth Cobonpue)

10. The Seatub

“The ‘seatub’ chair combines the idea of relaxing in a chair and a bathtub“ [4] (Designer: Ki Kim)

11. The Atar Chairs

“Gravitational Illusion. A fantasy of optically excellent proportions. These chairs float between naturalistic and industrial on a bed of impossibility.” [5] (Designers: Christian Andrés Parra Sánchez, Juliana Andrea Mosquera.)

12. A Chair With A Rug

“Designed for Italian furniture company “Casamania”, the chair features a metal structure in which ‘over-sized yarn’ is woven through to create a softness. the main base and seat are tightly woven, gradually getting looser in their stitching along the length of the chaise lounge, eventually fanning out over the floor making it an object that stands between carpet and furniture.” [6] (Designer: Sophie De Vocht)



13. Lathe Chair

“Designer started this series as a graduation project for the Eindhoven Academy and has since continued working on it.” [7] (Designer: Sebastian Brajkovic)

14. Him&Her Chairs

Light and sensational chair design. (Designer: Fabio Novembre)

15. Rocking On The Beach

“Have you ever experienced to dream that you are going to the beach? Breeze, the sound of waves and the sandy beach, these make our feeling so good. Rocking on the Beach helps you imagine the one of these experiences in your home. The plastic and pipe shape is designed for the best seashore sound, which is researched around the Netherlands seaside. The shape of chair with full of pipes gives a strong impression as an electronic circuit or urban city landscape.” [8] (Designers: Joon&Jung Designteller)

16. Tunnel Chair

Tunnel chairs are created by bending metal tubes, then wrapping elastic bands around, closing with velcro. (Designer: Noga Berman)

17. Splash Chair

“Ever look at macro photos of water splashes or super slow mo’ video of a droplet slamming into the surface sending ripples across a lake? There’s a moment in that 1/10 of a second when the impact creates a crater or sorts, as if you were small enough, it could neatly cup you. Inspired designer Michael Wendel created a 1/8th scale model called the Splash Lounge Chair, big enough for us to sit in.” [9] (Designer: Michael L. Wendel)

18. Selfportrait Chair

“The theory behind designing the Selfportrait Chair is very honest and simple. As an introvert, graduate student Ka-Lai Chan found it difficult to express her emotions lest her peers ridicule her. The stifled emotions grew like a nagging tumor and are seen as those odd blobs on this chair. Rarely do we come across an emotional side to a design accurately represented as this!” [10] (Designer: Ka-Lai Chan)

19. Skull Chair

“Souviens toi que tu vas mourir” (remember that you will die) chair by Pool, from the “Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), the New French Domestic Landscape” exhibition at the Milan Design Furniture. (link)

20. Puzzle-Like Inception Chair

Taking the chair archetype and placing within it chairs that are progressively smaller. Each chair has hand cut grooves on the inside edges of its seat frame as well as notches in the seat back. These grooves range from 1/2” wide to 1/8” wide. The mechanism works so that the pegs fit into the grooves of the chair one size bigger and slides into place so that the horizontal edge between the chair seat and back line up. The simple mechanism allows the chairs to be taken apart and put together with ease. (Designer: Vivian Chiu)