Exhibition: MIT x Emeco: The Next 150-Year Chair

For immediate release

MIT x Emeco: The Next 150-Year Chair
On view starting June 2, 2023
MIT Architecture HQ Gallery, 77 Mass Ave, 7-337, Cambridge, MA

Cambridge, MA, June 2, 2023 – MIT announced that MIT x Emeco: The Next 150-Year Chair—an exhibition featuring work from the Spring 2022 Advanced Product Design studio taught by Jeremy Bilottiis on view at MIT Architecture’s HQ Gallery through September 8, 2023. 

The cyclical manufacture and disposal of consumer products presents a number of inherent (and persistent) problems. In one category in particular—furniture goods—we can account for a significant proportion of carbon emissions and waste material globally, due to furniture’s large physical volume, raw material usage and high carbon impact from shipping. To further exacerbate this condition, phenomena such as “fast fashion” have become widespread, culturally-ingrained models for selling consumer products; thus “fast furniture”.

To contribute to reversing the tide of phenomena like “fast furniture”, and reducing the high overall impact of manufactured furniture goods, it will be necessary for designers to fundamentally rethink contemporary approaches to creating furniture. How should furniture now be perceived, used, valued and maintained during the lifetime of its functionality? In what ways can furniture be manufactured to reduce energy use, reduce raw material needs, or eliminate the production of waste altogether? How must furniture products respond to dramatic shifts in human behavior and urban living as Earth’s climate transforms in the immediate future? How can materials, typology and design languages of furniture contribute to increased product longevity?

In order to address these complex challenges, degree candidates from the Spring 2022 course 4.041 Advanced Product Design: The Next 150-Year Chair envisioned the future of furniture design and manufacturing through five design proposals. MIT x Emeco: The Next 150-Year Chair presents the five provocations in the form of photographic documentation, written design proposals and video interviews of the student designers.

About the Course:
4.041 Advanced Product Design: The Next 150-Year Chair was taught by Lecturer Jeremy Bilotti and made possible by a gift from Emeco, the important American furniture manufacturer who created the design for the celebrated “1006 Navy Chair”. In the mid 20th century, Emeco revolutionized aluminum manufacturing for consumer furniture—and in the process, created a recycled chair that would become one of the most iconic product designs in American history. In 2022, Emeco’s Head of Sustainability and Product Development Engineer, Jaye Buchbinder, and Chairperson Gregg Buchbinder joined the MIT Advanced Product Design course to provide insight into real-world problems in manufacturing, furniture design and fabrication. Students traveled to Emeco’s factory to study how recycled furniture products are made, and to inspire novel research trajectories. The course included guests and lectures from Andrés Reisinger, Júlia Esqué, Chen Chen, Kai Williams, David Rosenwasser, Marcelo Coelho, and others.

Graduate and undergraduate degree candidates in the class conceived of new ways to design furniture, novel fabrication methods, and more responsible ways to consume products. Students created full-scale furniture with liquid metal 3d printing, invented new ways of weaving textile slings, digitally simulated the physics of inflatable screens, refined complex cast aluminum chair parts, and robotically machined recycled HDPE into foldable seating. The result was a fundamental rethinking of furniture’s longevity, its function in peoples’ lives, and the aesthetics of sustainable manufacturing. The work was exhibited in Fall 2022 at the Emeco House in Venice, California and published on Dezeen, Wallpaper, MIT News, MIT Spectrum and beyond.

About the MIT Department of Architecture
The MIT Department of Architecture opened its doors in 1868 as the first Architecture department in the United States. MIT Architecture is currently home to around 250 graduate and undergraduate students. Numbered among the Department’s over 5,000 alumni are Sophia Hayden ’1890, Robert R. Taylor ’1892, I.M. Pei ’40, and Charles Correa ’55.

MIT x Emeco: The Next 150-Year Chair was supported by the MIT Department of Architecture.

MIT 4.041 Advanced Product Design (SP22) student projects were supported by a gift from Emeco.

MIT Student Project Contributors
María Risueño Dominguez, Faith Jones, Zain Karsan, Amelia Lee, Jo Pierre

Curation and Exhibition Design
Jeremy Bilotti, Lecturer in Design and Computation

Special Thanks
Skylar Tibbits, Amanda Moore, Bill McKenna, Jim Harrington, Nicholas de Monchaux, Jaye Buchbinder, Gregg Buchbinder, Lavender Tessmer, Emily Katrencik, David Rosenwasser, Gerard Patawaran, and Chris Haynes

Visitor Information
MIT Architecture HQ Gallery, 77 Mass Ave, 7-337, Cambridge, MA

Monday through Sunday, 7AM to 7PM

Media contacts
Amanda Moore
Communications Manager, MIT Department of Architecture
amm@mit.edu / 617-253-0692