Last year we designed the stage-setting for a single theater performance whose theme was garbage. The set design was assembled from retired public garbage bins. When the performance was over, our bin saga began.

 

A garbage bin has its own unique characteristics: it contains, it has wheels and ribs, it is stackable and thermoplastic.

 

A chair has its own unique characteristics: it contains, it has legs, it reflects tradition and human dimensions, it is structural.

 

We shuffled these characteristics; stretched and deformed the sides of the bin to create a seat, we sawed and bent the ribs to strengthen and emphasize forms. At times we hung on to a word or an image and melted the plastic to realize it; at times we allowed the process to take its own course.

 

The design process reexamined the chair archetype and confronted its traditional image with the relatively inferior one of its former life as a garbage bin.

On one hand is a bin - on the other, a chair.