Core77

We often see new pieces of furniture photographed "hero shot" style, with just one or two of them amidst an apartment-like catalogue background; so it's cool to see Austrian designer Thomas Feichtner's new stool design in all its mass production glory.

Called the Linz Hocker and made from recycled thermoplastic polymer by Vitra, the stool's "product launch" is actually an art installation:

The fundamental idea behind the installation, which consists of more than one thousand stools, is not to perform in a museum gallery but to launch signals from the [Landesgalerie] gallery. The temporary installation will not be preserved as a self-contained work but will be taken to pieces - the individual stools. Every visitor may remove a stool, starting the dismantling of the installation already from the opening of the exhibition "The Case Forum Design ". What will be left is: a piece of contemporary design in a number of Linz households.

The focus is not on giving something away but on the idea of artificial and sustainable democratization of design, projected onto a city like Linz. It is an attempt to use the visitor as distributor, supported by the suspension of all the market mechanisms to which any product is normally subjected.

One aspect of the concept is that over the years this product may become a unique Linz specimen: Stools will appear again and again in apartments, shops or studios. Some will change hands at the Linz flea markets after some years. In the course of time the Linz Hocker may begin to circulate in the City.

For more info, click here.