Seats of freedom

Simple, light-weight, and easily accessible: Here's an ode to the plastic chair.

- DIYA MARIA GEORGE

SPACE is not neutral," says Iraianbu Murugavel, principal architect at Studio All Blue in Chennai.

"It is produced through social relations, power, and our everyday practices. If one person sits on a chair and another sits on the ground, it immediately becomes hierarchical. Chairs are three-dimensional like an elevated platform, a three-dimensional map of hierarchy." He is talking about the plastic monobloc chair. Picture a tea shop in any Indian town.

Four or five plastic chairs sit outside the door, facing the road. People order chai and stay longer than the drink requires. They sit at the same height, on the same seat, for as long as the conversation lasts.

The equality comes riding on cheap polymer and post-liberalisation networks distribution.

This is the chair that, in January 2025, appeared on the cover of one of the most significant albums in recent music history. When Bad Bunny released 'Debí Tirar Más Fotos' (I Should Have Taken More Photos), he placed two white monobloc chairs in a banana grove and made that image the face of the record. The album is, in his own words, his most Puerto Rican work and the chairs are its emotional centre. An object that appears at every wedding, roadside stall, and political rally became the visual language for belonging.