20 Iconic Chair Designs You Should Know
ELLE DECOR’s edit of the seats that changed the course of design history.
No design element is more universal than the chair. While its basic body-supporting functionality has hardly changed, the chair has seen countless interpretations that encompass ever-changing tastes and evolving materials, technologies, and ideologies. All of which has made this practical domestic necessity, at its best, an emblem of status, style, and artistry.
“The chair is among the most designed, studied, written about, and celebrated artifacts of the modern era,” design historian Peter Fiell tells ELLE DECOR. And no wonder, when it offers insight into what makes us tick. “If you study the history of the chair, you rediscover the world,” Stine Liv Buur, manager of the classics collection at Vitra, explains. “From existing chairs, both from our contemporary times but also thousands-of-years-old chairs, we can learn about comfort, ergonomics, quality, material, functionality, connections, dimensions, and not least, sustainability.”
As for what makes a good chair, Liv Buur deems that a successful build is “a comfortable seat that lives up to its function and is sustainable within material, connections, and longevity.” Fiell adds that beyond such considerations—a truly great chair fundamentally offers a special connection with its user. “It can be a physical, psychological, structural, intellectual, contextual, ideological, emotional, aesthetic, cultural, or even a spiritual connection,” Fiell explains.
Of course, for every really good chair, there are myriad failed attempts that have paved the way. Among such iterations, certain perches have forged their own path beyond the derivative and act as testaments to enduring design and remarkable ingenuity. Whether it’s a revolutionary design like Michael Thonet’s totemic bentwood armchair or Le Corbusier’s machine age Grand Confort LC2 armchair, the sculptural tulip chair or the world’s first totally transparent polycarbonate chair, each furnishing deserves a seat in the hall of design fame.
And while such tasteful design objects are worthy of being savored as museum-worthy specimens, they were also intended to support everyday life. So, by all means, appreciate them from afar or bring one into your home to be used as it was intended. Read on for the 20 chair designs we believe are worth knowing—and, if you’re feeling inspired, owning. So draw up a chair, and don’t sit this one out.
Rachel Silva, the Assistant Digital Editor at ELLE DECOR, covers design, architecture, trends, and anything to do with haute couture. She has previously written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, and Citywire.
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