The Chairs Everyone Knows, Even If They Don’t Know Their Names

You have seen them in apartments, hotels, films, galleries, and all over your Instagram feed. But before they became design-world shorthand, today’s most iconic chairs were experiments in materials, technology, politics, and how we actually want to sit.

Here is the brief history behind eight of them.

Togo

Michel Ducaroy designed the Togo for Ligne Roset in 1973. With no traditional frame, its slouched silhouette is constructed from layers of foam. More than 50 years later, it remains a symbol of relaxed 1970s design.

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Wassily

Created by Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus in 1925, the Wassily Chair was inspired by tubular-steel bicycle frames. Breuer reduced the traditional club chair to leather planes suspended within a steel skeleton, creating a radically lighter way to sit.

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Panton

Verner Panton spent years developing his seemingly impossible chair. Produced with Vitra and presented in 1967, the Panton Chair became the first all-plastic, one-piece cantilever chair to reach production.

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Bibendum

Eileen Gray designed Bibendum in 1926. Named after the Michelin Man, two oversized upholstered tubes form its back, turning an advertising character into a modernist design icon.

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Iconic Chairs That Changed How We Sit

Terje Ekstrøm’s sculptural Ekstrem challenges the idea that a chair has one correct position. Its looping form invites you to sit sideways, lean, straddle, or lounge.

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UP5_6

Gaetano Pesce’s UP5_6, created in 1969, had a different message. Its curving armchair evokes a female body, while the attached spherical ottoman represents a ball and chain, transforming furniture into social commentary.

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LC2

The LC2, created by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand, exposes its tubular steel structure rather than hiding it beneath upholstery. Architecture, reduced to furniture.

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Pratone

Finally, Pratone. Designed in 1971 by Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi, and Riccardo Rosso, its enormous polyurethane blades resemble wildly oversized grass.

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Different decades, movements, and materials, but one shared idea connects these iconic chairs: none of their designers were interested in creating just another place to sit.