"Capitello" Chair
Designer Studio 65 Italian
Manufacturer Gufram Italian
Not on view
Franco Audrito and Piero Gatti founded Studio 65 as a radical response to functionalism. The Capitello side chair subverts a traditional icon of classical high culture—the Greek ionic capital and column—and replaces it with a Pop-inspired icon for a new generation skeptical of the establishment. Hard, noble marble is substituted by cushy, cheap, self-skinning polyurethane foam. The load-bearing structural pillar of government and financial institutions is brought down from its lofty heights in the form of a lounge chair that delights and surprises with its irreverent humor and biting sociopolitical critique.