100 chairs in 100 days - Martino Gamper

BACKGROUND: '100 Chairs in 100 Days' was an exhibition of found and reconfigured chairs by Martino Gamper. This renowned traveling exhibition has been showing around the world since 2007. The exhibition in Australia was curated for the Design Hub by Fleur Watson with Studio Gamper. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: For the Design Hub exhibition, Gamper created a new version of the 100th chair, fabricated within a single day using only found materials. Under Watson's curatorial program, the Design Hub was used as a site of performative exchange between practitioners, designers, artists and the public. This work demonstrates Watson's ongoing investigation into new ways of presenting and mediating architectural and design practices within the local context. She presents the curatorial program as a 'social medium that is not just about the presentation of research, but about its contextualisation and mediation' (Rhodes and Watson, Cusp-Design, October 2014). RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The exhibition took place at the peer-reviewed venue Design Hub: a progressive educational environment that houses a community of architects, designers, curators and students for collaborative, inter-disciplinary design research and education. It led to another curatorial project called 'Post Forma': a 3-day workshop and exhibition also curated by Watson. '100 Chairs' was featured in Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Canberra Times, InDesignLive, Australian Arts Review, Green Magazine and Furnishing International. It was part of the 2016 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program Project Series.