What are Cardboard Chairs?
Frank Gehry designed and invented cardboard chairs in the 70s and 80s. Layers of corrugated cardboard, reinforced by laminating, created an inventive, environmentally conscious, lowbrow alternative to designer furniture that appealed both to architectural artists and middle-class families. In more recent decades, architectural design schools have assigned as projects the creation of chairs capable of supporting an adult out of nothing more than a cardboard box and a utility knife. This tests students’ sense of aesthetics, construction, and engineering, with an affordable and flexible material. The famous architect, Frank Gehry, wanted to use an unconventional material to build innovative chairs to disrupt the highbrow design community’s expectations of furniture. His first series, made in 1969-72, was entitled “Easy Edges.” He utilized corrugated cardboard’s intrinsic strength, pliability, and visual appeal to make simple chairs that ordinary people could use in their dining room, kitc
