Over the past decade, discourse on archiving in Korea has matured considerably. Across the cultural field and beyond, a shared awareness of — and value placed upon — collecting and preserving has spread widely. Physical archival materials have been actively utilized in exhibitions as devices that reveal the originality and historicity of artists and their works. Meanwhile, archives and collections have expanded into marketing strategies emphasizing brand value, institutional information systems, and even into the realms of data visualization services and businesses.

This momentum is equally visible in the field of design. The awareness and practice of archiving are being actively developed. At a time when the establishment of Korean design history and the search for its identity heightened the sense of lack surrounding archives, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) hosted a research forum in 2019 titled Absent Archive: Design, Architecture, and Visual Culture. The forum explored how, in the absence of robust public archives, the fields of architecture and design might function as archival practices through exhibition and publication.

When one departs from the traditional notion that separates the subject and object of exhibition and archiving, the personal acts of collecting, exhibiting, and publishing by Korean designers have, since the 2010s, become increasingly common — now a familiar phenomenon. This movement has been particularly active in graphic design, often taking the form of chronological records and retrospectives. At the same time, industrial design studios have been archiving and exhibiting records of their design processes and prototypes.

The Korean design community’s passion for archiving carries an existential dimension. It reflects a unique characteristic of Korean design culture. Individual designers’ acts of archiving and exhibiting often take the form of self-narration — designers becoming both the subject and object of documentation. This practice manifests a desire to use archiving not merely as a unit of knowledge or a technical act but as a mode of self-inquiry and a means of communicating the social and cultural relationships embodied in their works. In this sense, designers are embracing archiving as an independent design grammar and methodology.

Within this context of Korea’s growing archival impulse, Seating Seoul emerged in 2020 as a Seoul-based chair archive project founded by three designers — Song Bong-kyu, So Dong-ho, and Yang Jung-mo. Sparked by a foreign designer’s question, “Are there chair designers in Seoul?”, the project seeks to map the landscape of 21st-century chair design in the city.

The Chair Archive of Seating Seoul

Seating Seoul is a platform that captures and introduces chairs created in Seoul since the year 2000 — chairs that reflect diverse cultural, social, and material contexts. Rather than a completed collection, it is an ever-evolving archive that continues to grow step by step. Based on its online archival website, the project began with its first exhibition in 2020 at Culture Station Seoul 284, titled Seating Seoul: Chair Archive in Seoul, 21st Century. It was followed by Seating Seoul: Enjoyment of Everyday Life at the Gujeong Art Center of the Onyang Folk Museum that same year, and Spectrum of Seating at the Euljiro Underground Arcade and Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in 2022.

The fourth exhibition, held this year, presents one hundred chairs — reflecting ongoing deliberations about the structure and scope of the archive’s data system. To ensure sustainability, Seating Seoul is refining its criteria for selection, data range, and management methodology. The project plans to systematize its records by classifying each chair’s data into categories of person and object, while managing its own curatorial selection history.

In the long term, the project aims to document the production processes and industrial, technological, and social contexts that underpin each chair. Beyond technical details on materials and fabrication, Seating Seoul seeks to include information on collaborative studios and partners, exhibitions and publications, ownership histories, and even clients or commissioners. By integrating these datasets, the archive aspires to serve as a reliable reference for accurate authorship and provenance. The team is also developing a structure that will protect participants’ copyrights while facilitating future collaborations with individuals, companies, and institutions.

What Do the Chairs of Seating Seoul Articulate?

The chair archive of Seating Seoul is still in the process of cultivating its own sensibility. Throughout this process, the clustered display format — used since the inaugural 2020 exhibition — has proven to be an effective device. For audiences familiar with twentieth-century Western chair design and brand imagery, the chairs of Seating Seoul offer a new kind of visual experience and education. The collective impression created by the selected works reveals that the formal language and experimental spirit of chairs born in Seoul are by no means inferior to the classics of the twentieth century.

Beyond visual impression, these chairs embody intangible knowledge and sensibilities of the time — design concepts, materials, and languages internalized by their creators. Through the processes of documenting and exhibiting these elements, the Seating Seoul archive seeks to reveal both the uniqueness and the evolution of contemporary Korean design. This is precisely the direction and the distinctive identity that Seating Seoul strives to pursue through its practice of archiving.

27 Chairs, 27 Perspectives — Spectrum of Sitting

A chair is an indispensable piece of furniture when discussing living design trends and styles.
We sit on chairs to work, eat, and rest every day. The function of a space is often realized through chairs, and the sequence or arrangement of seats can even define the relationships between people.

This exhibition brings together twenty-seven chairs created by twenty-seven designers based in Seoul. Each piece represents a unique exploration of form and concept — from chairs made of recycled materials in pursuit of sustainability, to those designed for true relaxation, to others that bring moments of joy into daily life. Designers and craftspeople in active practice have translated their perspectives through diverse materials, reinterpreting what a chair can be.

Through this exhibition, the three curators aim to view the chair anew — through the lens of each participating designer. To encourage both the creators and visitors to approach the object from a broader perspective, they have chosen the word “Seating” instead of “Chair.”

The exhibition treats the chair as a medium for examining industrial and craft-based materials and structures. In doing so, it proposes a new interpretation of the act of sitting — beyond a mere functional or consumable object.
We hope that more people will experience, enjoy, and collect chairs designed by Korean designers, and that this exhibition will serve as a meeting point between new producers and collectors.

Dates: September 2 – October 2, 2022

Venue: Design Gallery, 1F Design Lab, DDP(Dongdaemun Design Plaza), Seoul

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The dictionary meaning of seating is defined as a space occupied by a person or an object, the tracks left after the body or an object undergoes a certain change, and a place designated so that a person can sit. A chair is a piece of furniture limited to this “place,” carrying the metaphysical structure of seating.

The humanistic meaning of seating

A chair is a material signal that accommodates seating, symbolized as space, tracks, and place. For this reason, as a body that performs these three concepts, it is also a symbolic tool that translates the historicity of the user’s life and actions into a humanistic structure.

The chair is one of the very unique types of furniture that carries symbolic meaning as much as its instrumental materiality. In other words, behind the simple purpose of use of a chair lies also the immaterial temporality and spatiality of life, such as the idea of a “father’s chair.”

Guy de Maupassant’s short story The Chair Mender, which tells the story of a woman who loved one man for 55 years as a chair repairer; the play It’s Not the Chair’s Fault, composed of four episodes such as the daughter of a furniture shop owner who feels her life is miserable like a discarded chair, the materialistic shop owner, the young man fascinated by a library chair, and a wife who cannot understand her husband’s overspending on expensive chairs; and the play The Chairs, which depicts the emptiness, boredom, delusion, and violence of a couple living on an isolated island and the emptiness afterwards — all show the literariness of chairs beyond their physical presence. In particular, Japanese novelist Edogawa Ranpo’s short story collection The Human Chair contains the horror catharsis of a protagonist who hides in the space of a chair, infiltrates another’s space, and observes every move.

“My profession is to make chairs. The chairs I made always satisfied even the most difficult orders, so many clients treated me well and gave me good jobs. By ‘good jobs’ I mean orders that required carving on backrests or armrests, reflecting detailed preferences in cushion types or measurements. To make such special chairs, one must go through worries that a beginner could not even imagine. But the more I worried, the greater the joy when the chair was completed. I dare say the feeling was comparable to the joy of an artist completing a masterpiece.” – The functional chair

“Seeing the chair finally completed, I felt a satisfaction I had never experienced before. Though I made it, the chair had such an excellent degree of completion that I was mesmerized. As always, I took one of the four chairs, which formed a set, out to the sunny porch and sat comfortably. How good it felt! The elasticity of the cushion that softly embraced the body, neither too hard nor too soft; the feel of leather stitched from gray fabric left undyed; the solid backrest that supported my back at the right angle; the gently swelling armrests with their delicate curves — all of these elements harmonized together, as if the word ‘comfort’ had taken form before my eyes.” – The emotional chair

“I hurriedly dismantled the armchair that was the most perfectly completed among the four, and remade it into a form suitable for carrying out my strange plan. It was a very large armchair, with leather covering down to where the seat nearly touched the floor, and with very thick backrest and armrests. Inside, there was a cavern large enough to conceal a man so that no one could know from the outside. Of course, inside the chair there was a strong wooden frame and many springs, but I modified them appropriately so that one could fit knees into the seat and the upper body into the backrest — creating enough space for a person to hide while taking on the exact shape of the chair.” – The purposeful chair

“As you may have guessed, the first purpose of my bizarre act was to sneak out of the chair when no one was around and steal around the hotel. Who would ever imagine that someone could be hiding inside a chair? Like a shadow, I could wander from room to room. And when people became noisy, I would escape back into the secret space inside the chair and silently watch them foolishly search for the thief.” – The chair of desire

A single story shows the process of one chair being dismantled and reconstructed into completely different functions and uses by human desire. This symbolizes how the chair, as an object, can embody even the framework of a man’s life and surpass imagination in its role and purpose.

From seating to chair, and from chair back to seating

If seating is an immaterial metaphor that records human history, the chair is the object that realizes it. Yet for Koreans, who had a culture of floor-sitting, the chair is a product of less than a hundred years of history. Perhaps for this reason, unfortunately, we have not gained a world-class chair or a designer who created one. The structure, form, material, technology, and design of the chair belong to the West. Yet, though it may seem a poor proposal, I cautiously foresee that, rather than the Western chair born of practicality, Korea’s cultural imagination — which has risen from the floor little by little toward the chair — will bloom more richly in the future of chair design.

Chairs are classified as stools, benches, sofas, and so on according to function, but all are subordinate to the role of supporting the body. However, the chair as an objet escapes the restriction of function and maximizes the emotion of the object. The reason why a designer’s worldview, emotion, materiality, and freedom of form appear most frequently in chairs is precisely because chairs alone carry the unique humanistic sentiment and three-dimensional structure that extend from seating.

The archive Seating Seoul is a storage of chairs we have made from the modern era to the present, and at the same time, a “digilog” sub-storage that melts and preserves the time, traces, and places that seating signifies.

On a chair left by a person, desolate emptiness descends. Yet even when its use has not been abandoned, the chair continues to bear the heavy body of someone, structure space, and record the history of everyday life. In this entire process, the responsibility of the furniture designer accompanies the times. Seating Seoul must be connected not only as the history of chair design, but also as an existential space that builds the trajectory of life.

To see the exhibition Seating Seoul, I went through a kind of rite of passage. To reach Culture Station Seoul 284, one cannot avoid crossing the plaza of Seoul Station, which stands like an island no matter which direction you come from. Passing by people leaning their bodies in the noise-filled square, I finally reached the exhibition hall, an island within an island. Because of the pandemic, visitors had to view the chairs on display through glass from the plaza. I was lucky enough to enter the hall, but then I saw, through the glass, the people in the square I had just passed.

The chairs inside had no one sitting on them, and the people outside had no place to sit. The chairs, placed in that small, separated space, were creations by active Korean designers. They were special chairs, recognizable to those who know, perhaps enviable. But compared to famous chairs from abroad, they were still unfamiliar to the public eye. They had not yet found their place. In that sense, though the two worlds divided by glass appeared different, inside or outside, the need for one’s own seat was the same.

The Seating Seoul project records and presents chairs born from the city’s creators; it is an effort to make a special seat for them. It may sound odd to say that a chair is given a seat. Yet, as co-curators So Dong-ho, Song Bong-kyu, and Yang Jeong-mo noted, chairs that can be called “born in Seoul” have reached a noteworthy level, and it is time to confirm that in one place. One hundred chairs designed since 2000 have been collected in the first round — not a small number. Over the past twenty years, remarkable results have accumulated, proving that designers can create fine chairs with skill and flair. Still, it seems exceptionally difficult for them to win people’s love.

Even among the chairs exhibited, many showed outstanding design. Yet the fact that designers themselves had to step forward to collect and promote them suggests they have not received a response that matches their value. Is it because the chairs lack quality or appeal? Or is it because people lack discernment? The reason seems to lie elsewhere: for many people, the chair itself is too desperately needed. With no places to sit, and with sitting in comfort so difficult, there is little leisure to look closely at a chair and listen to its meaning and story.

Commonly, to ask for a chair means to ask for the opportunity to work, or to be enabled to work properly. In fact, Article 80 of the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations even includes a clause on “provision of chairs” (an employer must provide chairs so that workers who stand continuously may use them when they have the opportunity to sit during work).

At times, however, there are invited seats that remain empty. On December 10, 2010, the empty chair at the Nobel Prize ceremony drew worldwide attention. It was the seat for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, but because the Chinese government forbade him, his family, and relatives from leaving the country, the medal and diploma were placed on the chair. The same year, at the Cannes Film Festival, another empty chair was seen — it was meant for Iranian director Jafar Panahi. Charged with anti-government activity and banned for 20 years from filmmaking, travel, and interviews, he had been invited as a jury member, but was not permitted to leave the country.

These empty chairs were symbols of regret and protest. Then what of the “empty chairs” of Seating Seoul? Each holds a story too precious to miss: Choi Sung-il’s Random Stool, where particles are uniquely fixed; Seo Jeong-hwa’s Material Container, finding familiar proportions within stark material contrasts; Kim Ki-hyun’s 1.3 Chair, embodying the clear concept of “ultra-lightweight” in physical form. The chairs speak their stories, yet it was the empty space above them, and the atmosphere lingering like spaces between lines, that kept drawing my attention.

Despite many challenges by designers, craftsmen, architects, and engineers, if you close your eyes and picture a chair, a “Seoul-born chair” may not come to mind. Whether at home or work, the chairs we sit on are more likely products of low-wage labor from elsewhere in Asia, not of Seoul. Most commercial and public spaces are filled with anonymous chairs made in some Asian country, though they look like those designed by Hans Wegner, Alvar Aalto, or Arne Jacobsen. In big tech offices or stylish studios, one occasionally finds famous “original” chairs, but rarely those born in Seoul.

So how do Seoul’s chairs differ from those “originals”? Strangely enough, when looking at the chairs archived in Seating Seoul and their designers, one feels as though watching performers on YouTube or audition programs who excel in acting or singing. That is how many talented people there are. To use a metaphor, what Seoul’s chairs may need is not acting ability but scenography and choreography. Just as architecture stands on the ground, designed chairs also need a foundation — a stage, a seat. As aesthetic or experimental objects, they may be invited to exhibitions, but whether they remain something that gives lasting impression, or something intimate and beloved enough to always keep close, is uncertain.

In other words, the evaluation of a chair as an individual object and the force it holds are on different planes. That force lies beyond the meaning and value of each chair itself — it may be the mood suggested by the seating, the atmosphere between chairs, or the narrative that links the chairs and their surroundings. What if the archiving named Seating Seoul could create such dynamism? After all, the word “seating,” a verb, was used rather than “chair.”

If this essay had connected the history and socio-cultural meaning surrounding chairs with Seating Seoul, it might have been more intriguing. But in this time of isolation, emptiness, and anxiety, what remains most strongly in memory is the image of people and chairs alike unable to secure a seat, left drifting. The peculiar feeling evoked by the rows of fine chairs in an empty exhibition hall is not something to be dismissed as merely a scene of the pandemic. Much remains to be done — and only now is the beginning — for these chairs to find their rightful seats, for their design, production, and creation to be justly recognized.

Written Interview with SPACE, Architecture Magazine

How did the Seating Seoul project begin?

BK(Song Bong-kyu)
There were a few personal triggers for me. In 2019, I visited the Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen and saw an exhibition that systematically archived contemporary chairs. It made me realize that Seoul, too, now has enough outstanding works and designers to begin talking about “chairs designed in Seoul.” I also came across Atlas of Furniture Design, published by Vitra, and thought that someday the design chairs of Seoul could also be archived as valuable contemporary materials — meaningful references for both designers and collectors.

JM(Yang Jung-mo)
As foreign furniture brands, vintage furniture, and IKEA entered Korea, consumers’ awareness and appreciation of chairs increased. Recently, I’ve noticed more and more consumers seeking chairs designed by domestic designers and artists. In this atmosphere, I thought it would be beneficial to create a platform that collects Korean chair designs, introduces them both online and offline, and connects creators with consumers more easily — something that could positively influence both sides.

Why did you choose to focus on “chairs,” made “in Seoul,” and “now”?

BK
After the Nordic furniture boom that swept through Seoul’s living scene a few years ago, I began to ask myself, “So what remains for us?” I felt that it was time for new living products that reflect our own individual tastes, and among them, I found particular significance in chairs designed by Seoul-based designers. Looking further ahead, I believe these chairs could also serve as valuable records when people abroad study Seoul’s design scene.

DH(So Dong-ho)
I think the rise of Korean furniture designers has been especially visible over the past decade. Watching this trend, I began to feel a strong need to document it — to leave a record. Once something is archived, it gains strength, and that often leads to more opportunities and consumption. Seoul as a city has a symbolic power that brings us together, and the “chair” is a shared object of universal empathy. When talking about the design level of a country or city, chairs are an indispensable indicator.

The chairs shown in Seating Seoul vary greatly in form, material, and function. Did you have any specific criteria for archiving?

BK
We’ve focused on chairs designed after the year 2000. Our main goal is to archive as diverse a range of chairs as possible. The basic criterion is whether we can find a sense of “contemporaneity” in the work — that’s our minimal guideline.

DH
I think, inevitably, our personal preferences — mine and the other two members’ — are reflected in the archiving process. Even so, we’ve tried to show as broad a spectrum as possible in terms of function, material, and form. Personally, I pay attention to how contemporary the materials are and how much originality the chair has.

JM
We’re trying to archive as many different chairs as possible. Personally, I’m particularly drawn to chairs that are made in a clear and efficient way.

Many designers and planners were involved. How did the team come together, and what roles did each of you play?

BK
At first, I started collecting materials on my own. Then, naturally, I began discussing archiving with designer Yang Jung-mo. Later, through his introduction, artist So Dong-ho joined, and that’s how our current team was formed. It all started with our first meeting in the winter of January 2020. We didn’t assign specific roles — we divided responsibilities flexibly depending on the exhibition or situation.
The graphic design was handled by designers Hong Eun-ju and Kim Hyung-jae. I’d long admired the archive-style websites they had designed, so I reached out to them to join this project.

DH
While there weren’t fixed roles, the three of us shared ideas and proceeded with archiving together. Naturally, Director Song took the lead in building the foundation for the web archive and communicating with the graphic designers, Yang Jung-mo was in charge of the spatial design for the exhibition, and I took on the task of sourcing chairs from designers and communicating with participants. Other detailed tasks were handled flexibly as needed.

Through Seating Seoul, what tendencies or directions have you observed in Seoul’s living design scene?

BK
I think we’re still in the process of exploration. Ultimately, I hope the interpretation lies in the minds of the audience who see the exhibition. Once, the three of us placed more than 60 chairs in one space and talked for hours. Each of us imagined faint images of what might be called “Seoul (or Korean) design.”

DH
While archiving, I felt that the diversity within chair categories is still somewhat limited. For example, there are many stools and dining chairs, but relatively few benches, sofas, lounge chairs, or rocking chairs. This probably reflects the fact that many are produced by independent designers or small studios. In general, I think the current trend in living design emphasizes material-driven minimalism rather than purely functional aspects.

JM
For now, our focus is on archiving and introducing as many chairs as possible. Once we accumulate enough data, we plan to categorize them by year, material, and other factors to analyze emerging trends.

If you had to pick just three chairs from the exhibition that deserve special attention, which would they be?

DH
Each of the 16 chairs presented in this exhibition is unique on its own, but when they’re placed together in one space, the overall composition creates another layer of completeness. It’s hard to single out only three, but for reference, artist Kim Hyun-sung’s Brass Chair was newly designed for this exhibition. It’s fun to spot the subtle differences from his earlier versions.

BK
Every work has its own strong character and distinct features. If I had to choose three, I’d highlight designer Moon Seok-jin’s Curvature Chair, which is being introduced in Korea for the first time; designer Lee Jae-ha’s Wedge Chair; and designer Lee Hak-min’s Paw Bench — all particularly impressive pieces.

One of the project’s aims is to connect designers, manufacturers, users, and collectors. Could you explain more specifically what that means?

BK
Talking with manufacturing factories, I realized there are more places than expected that need designers’ input. I also met a few architects recently who were looking for new furniture. International design media and designers, too, are showing growing interest in Seoul’s vibrant design scene. So, I thought this momentum could be connected through the medium of the “chair.”
If designers and their works are properly recorded on the Seating Seoul website, I believe it could naturally expand into a network involving manufacturers as well.

Due to COVID-19 social distancing (Level 2.5), the exhibition had to be presented as a window display. Are there plans to show it elsewhere?

BK
After this exhibition ends, we plan to move it to the Onyang Folk Museum, adding several more chairs. We’re also in discussion with several art fairs and museums. In the future, we hope to create an annual program introducing newly released chairs each year.

Will the Seating Seoul project continue? If so, what future plans do you have?

BK

The original purpose was to document chairs designed between 2000 and 2020 on a website. Then, by good fortune, we had the opportunity to hold an exhibition at the Seoul Station TMO. As mentioned earlier, our first goal is to strengthen the online archive itself.Currently, about 100 chairs are in the process of being archived, and we plan to officially launch the archive-centered website by the end of this year or early next year. Based on this archive, we also plan to develop related projects such as exhibitions and publications.We’re receiving advice from several advisors — including Professor Kim Sang-kyu, CEO Koo Byung-jun, and CEO Yuk Sang-soo — and continuing to discuss the future direction and expanded concept of the archive.

Interview originally published in SPACE, October 2020.

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