Who has never seen it? There monobloc chairor more properly Monobloc Chairis the classic White plastic seat That we find everywhere: in the outdoor bars, at the village festivals, on the balconies, in the bathing establishments and in any garden. Light, stackable and composed of a The only piece of polypropylene – resin that is injected into a high temperature mold and left to harden – its name owes to the latter feature. He began to spread on a global scale from the 80s, thanks to a lucky combination of factors: it is economic both to be produced and to be purchased, resists bad weather (waterproof), is easy to transport and stack and, not a small thing, surprises for his comfort despite the essentiality of the design.
From experimental design to mass production
The idea of creating a chair starting from a single piece of material is not recent: it dates back to the 1920s, when several designers began to experiment with printed sheet metal solutions or steam curved wood. The concept of “monobloc” chair as we understand it today, however, began to outline only between the 1940s and fifty, thanks to theIntroduction of plastics In the field of furniture and design and new technologies that allowed to work this material through a single production phase. Among the precursors stands out the Canadian Douglas Colborne Simpson, author of one of the very first concepts, but it is only of the next decade that the first models produced on a large scale begin to appear, some of which have become iconic. Chairs like the famous Panton Chair (1958–68) by the Danish designer Verner Pantonthe Bofinger Chair (1964–68) by the German architect Helmut Bätzner, or even the 4867 Universal (1967) by Joe Colombo and the Selene (1961–68) by Vico Magistretti, mark the main stages of this path.
As far as it is, in fact, it is anything but cheap, they are to be considered technical ancestors of the monobloc: all plastic, produced in a single piece, stackable and in some cases printed with the same injection technique that will make the “popular” chair famous. The turning point came in 1972 with Henry Massonnet, creator of the Fauteuil 300true forerunner of Monobloc. Thanks to the progress in Injection molding plastic, the French engineer managed to optimize the internal production cycle by reducing it to Less than two minutes: a real revolution in terms of time, costs and accessibility. In the eighties the phenomenon exploded definitively. Companies such as the French Grosfillex and the Italian Alibert, followed by hundreds of producers all over the world, began to churn out millions of specimens every year, large -scale products at such a low cost that they can be on the market a Very convenient prices. Thus was born the Resin Garden Chairthe version that we all recognize today as the classic Monobloc: very light, stackable, resistant to atmospheric agents and even comfortable.
A democratic chair, the most widespread in the world
The monobloc chair is an object with a rather anonymous design – the simple and ergonomic profile refers to an essential and functional aesthetic – but which is also a symbol of the contradictions of the consumption society. On the one hand, it is the most democratic furniture that exists (cheap, available everywhere), on the other, does not respond to the sustainability criteria (it is a standardized mass product in non -biodegradable plastic, easily replaceable and difficult to recyclable or repairable). Several contemporary designers have resumed the model of the Monobloc to reflect on these themes; among the reinterpretations: the Café Chair (2006) by Fernando and Humberto Campana, La Respect Cheap Furniture (2009) by Martí Guixé and the Monothrone (2017) by Martino Gamper.
Within a few decades, the monobloc has reached every corner of the planet, supplanted, especially in developing countries, the traditional wooden or metal chairs. It is difficult to estimate how many there are in circulation, but there is talk of colossal figures: almost a billion specimens sold in Europe alone and several billion in the world. However, to make its story even more interesting is the fact that it is not anyone, or rather, that it does not have a recognized unique father. Several designers have claimed the original idea, but no exclusive patent has ever been recorded. Anyone, in any part of the world, has been able to copy it and produce their variations freely, contributing to its diffusion on a global scale. In a sense, it is one of the first “Open Source” objects of the furniture industry.
