It seems to be everywhere: inside a storeroom in Florida, outside the Uruguay Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and on a boat on the Zambezi River in Zambia, to mention just a few of the places the chair has been spotted, according to the Plastic Chair World Map. No one knows how many exist in their different versions or even who the original designer is, but they clearly number in the millions.
The industry calls it the monobloc chair. To everyone else it’s that cheap plastic chair, the squarish, one-piece, stackable thing that populates the lawns and gardens of the world, so ubiquitous as to go unnoticed.
Executive director Hong Hock Seng still vividly recalls that day. ‘When the first piece of the chair came out at midnight, I had to carry it to the airport and catch a flight to Canada for an exhibition,’ he said. ‘It was my first time travelling overseas, and I didn’t even know how to change planes!’ He eventually made it to the trade show with two white chairs and clinched the MS 938A’s first sales. Ironically, Mah Sing had sold the plastic chair back to the West where it was originally invented.
The version produced by Malaysia’s Mah Sing Plastic is indistinguishable from others except for a few details: a ‘Magnum’ trademark stamped on its back, rows of dash-like drainage slots (six on the spine and fifteen on the seat), and an ‘Asian-friendly’ size of 80×54×45 cm (31.5×21.3×17.7 in). It is also manufactured just like the others: tiny beads of polypropylene and colour concentrate are melted at a temperature of 200°C (392°F) and then injected into a mould. Sixty seconds later, or even less, a 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) plastic chair is unveiled. This process hasn’t changed since the first MS 938A rolled off the assembly line in 1987.
With the end of the Second World War, furniture designers began experimenting with the newly invented plastics to make chairs. Pioneering examples include the iconic single-shell chair by Americans Charles and Ray Eames, and the Hille Polypropylene chair by British designer Robin Day. The first all-plastic chair, however, wouldn’t arrive until 1965, when Italian industrial designer Joe Colombo created the Universale. It would take another two decades before such a chair caught on with manufacturers, but after Mah Sing’s founder saw one at a trade fair in Germany in the mid-1980s, he developed his own to expand his business beyond the manufacture of plastic containers.
The MS 938A was just one of several all-plastic chairs that entered the market beginning in the 1980s. Though the details of their designs differed, they shared similar features that proved to be big advantages: they were light, cheap, and most importantly, stackable. By offering the flexibility to seat just as many people as needed, this space-saving design eventually replaced Thonet’s Chair No. 14 as the furniture of choice amongst kopitiams, the local coffeeshops of Malaysia and neighbouring Singapore, although traces of the No. 14 live on in plastic chairs from Malaysia. Their designs display a similar silhouette, and a version from one of Mah Sing’s competitors even has a seat with a pattern that mimics the cane seating of the No. 14.
Today plastics are used so widely that it may be difficult to understand how strange the idea seemed in an age when furniture was still typically made from natural materials like wood, cane or metal. ‘Thirty years ago, when you said “plastic”, they would say, “Huh?” To them, it was very fragile, very brittle. So you had to demonstrate to them,’ explains Mr Hong as he bends the backrest of the MS 938A towards its seat and lets it spring back to shape. It’s a stunt he often used to prove the durability of the material and how plastic chairs can withstand the elements.
Such flexibility is also found in the transparency of polypropylene, which allows manufacturers to produce the chairs in a wide assortment of colours. While customers in Europe and America may picture the plastic chair in pristine white, the multi-ethnic communities in Malaysia and Singapore see theirs in an array of colours instead, says Mr Hong. Based on the sales of MS 938A, which has been sold largely in Southeast Asia, red is a favourite amongst the Chinese, green is well-liked by the Malays and blue is preferred by Indians. The market for Mah Sing’s white chairs seems to be limited to funeral parlours.
Unlike most chairs that become iconic for a specific aesthetic or function, the plastic chair has become popular for the pliability of both its material and its design. Like a blank canvas, it can be easily customised for economical mass production. The result is not only a highly functional and affordable piece of furniture used by people all around the world, but also a sign of our globalised times.
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Whether you love it or hate it there’s no denying its enduring success of the monobloc chair.
Since its inception over 60 years ago, it’s likely the number of monobloc chairs that have been produced is in the billions.
The very embodiment of mass consumerism, they are affordable across the world because they cost so little to make: approximately $3.50 to produce.
Conceived in the fifties at a crucial moment in design history, this white piece of plastic was hailed as chair for the world, afforded global success thanks to production methods that today make it as problematic as it is iconic.
The monobloc chair, the very embodiment of mass consumerism – ©Mabel Amber – cover image – ©Victoria & Albery MuseumBefore the plastics revolution, the idea of a mass-produced molded chair was ahead of its time.
When Canadian Designer Douglas Simpson came up with a prototype in 1946, his monobloc chair didn’t have a suitable molding process to make it a success.
This all changed in the sixties with the launch of the Panton chair, designed by Danish designer Verner Panton.
The monobloc char is produced using injection molding, a production method that found popularity in the latter half of the 20th century– © rrnavA predecessor to the original icon, this classic piece of Modernist furniture with its distinctive S-shaped design, was considered to be the first molded plastic chair.
The Pantone was representative of the Space Age style that dominated the decade but it also represented a time in which production methods could support the monobloc in its path to success.
Still produced today by Swiss company Vitra, it can be found in museums around the world including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, London’s Design Museum, Berlin’s German Historical Museum, and Copenhagen’s Danish Museum of Art & Design.
Find out more about revolutionary mass-produced products, don’t miss Bic Pen: A cheap design that changed the history of writing.
This is all thanks to the way the monobloc is produced.
Let’s be clear, you’ll know a monobloc when you see one.
Whether you’re on holiday in Spain or sitting in your grandma’s garden, chances are a monobloc chair is part of the furniture.
The Panton chair, designed by Danish designer Verner Pantones – ©VitraWith its four legs, slightly sloping seat, a backrest with slats or a pattern, and two armrests, the monobloc is obvious in its appearance.
What defines it most of all, however, is the way it’s produced.
The name comes from mono- (“one”) and bloc (“block”), meaning an object forged in a single piece, a single piece made possible thanks to injection molding, a production method that found popularity in the latter half of the 20th century.
After the success of the Panton chair, there were a number of designs worldwide that followed suit.
The Tip Ton chair by Edward Barber – ©VitraIn 1972, French designer Henry Massonnet unveiled the Fauteuil 300, his attempt at making the white plastic chair a lifestyle product.
However, the growing mass-consumer market needed a little more watering and it wasn’t until some time around the release of Grosfillex’s Resin Garden Chair in 1983 that the first high volume mass-produced chairs came to market at a low price.
That’s why the monobloc has such enduring success, because of their affordability at scale.
It’s true, the molds for such a product are expensive but also greatly scalable, meaning little workforce, time, and material cost are needed when producing on mass.
In fact, most of today’s plastic furniture still uses the same injection-molding process as its predecessors, a feat both remarkable and problematic.
Since the ’60s, designers have continued to experiment with the monobloc’s typical characteristics.
An example of the innumerable variations produced over time is the Tip Ton chair by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, which features a rocking structure to promote correct posture.
Another, perhaps more reserved take, is La Maria by Philippe Starck for Kartell in 1998, one of the first polycarbonate chairs that afforded a recognizable amount of strength.
La Maria by Philippe Starck for Kartell – ©KartellWhat is remembered as a symbol of great innovation in the last half a century has today become a notorious icon in an industry plagued by plastic pollution.
This has prompted many designers to embark on their own sustainable interpretations of the monobloc like the Cafè Chair designed in 2006 by the Brazillian brother duo Campana Brothers, and Respect Cheap Furniture designed by Spanish designer Martì Giuxé in the same year.
The Cafè Chair designed by the Brazillian brother duo Campana Brothers © Humberto & Fernando Campana© Respect Cheap Furniture designed by Spanish designer Martì Giuxé – Jürgen HansMore recently, Konstant Grcic has given the monobloc chair his own treatment, using recycled polypropylene to create a contemporary version that’s affordable, versatile but more importantly, sustainable.
The Bell Chair, Konstant Grcic’s treatment of the monobloc chair – © MagisDescribed by social theorists as a symbol of ‘global ubiquity’, it doesn’t matter where it is in the world, seeing a white plastic chair offers no clue about where or when you are.
Perhaps the world’s most popular piece of furniture, it’s amazing that a single piece of white plastic can be both hugely successful and yet markedly nondescript and controversial.
Symbolic of a cheap and flexible material made popular by a surge in consumerism, it poses many questions and contradictions; a concept manifested in Bert Loeschner‘s humorous ‘monobloc’ project, in which he uses heat to transform the chair into witty sculptural pieces.
As well as an endless source of inspiration in art and design, the monobloc is provocative of a social commentary.
© “Waterproof” and “Rocking Chair” by Bert LoeschnerWhilst representative of cheap mass-produced design in industrialized countries, in developing nations it is a democratic object that provides much-needed value.
The monobloc chair provokes a love-hate relationship as a piece for and against the world and this defines its position in the hall of fame.
Curious to know more about Konstant Grcic’s interpretation of the monobloc chair? Head to Konstantin Grcic’s Bell Chair for Magis.
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