Bean bag chair explained

Sacco
Designer:Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro
Date:1968
Style:Radical design
Collection:MOMA · Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Victoria and Albert Museum, and 25 other contemporary art museums throughout the world

The Sacco chair, also known as a bean bag chair, beanbag chair, or simply a beanbag is a large fabric bag filled with polystyrene beans. It was designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and in 1968. "Sacco" is Italian for "bag, sack". The product is an example of an anatomic chair, as the shape of the object is set by the user.

The Sacco became "one of the icons of the Italian anti-design movement. Its complete flexibility and formlessness made it the perfect antidote to the static formalism of mainstream Italian furniture of the period,” as Penny Spark wrote in Italian Design – 1870 to the Present.[1]

Sacco was awarded the XXVI Premio Compasso d'Oro and is exhibited in the collections of some of the most important contemporary art museums throughout the world.

The architect, Cesare Paolini, was born in Genoa and graduated from the Polytechnic University of Turin. Franco Teodoro and Piero Gatti, the designers, studied at the Istituto Tecnico Industriale Statale per le Arti Grafiche e Fotografiche of Turin. They established their architecture firm in Turin in 1965.[2]

History

Sacco was introduced in 1968 by three Italian designers: Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro.[1] The object was created in the Italian Modernism movement.[3] Italian modernism's design was highly inspired by newly available technology. Post-war technology allowed an increase in the processes of production, by introducing new materials such as polystyrene. The idea of mass-produced goods made within an inexpensive price range appealed to consumers. It therefore created the need for a revolution in the creative and manufacturing process.

The designer was an integral member of a process that included marketing as well as engineering. The inspiration left by Corradino D’Ascano's Vespa design for the Piaggio Corporation in 1946 added value to the essence of the designer. With successful designs, brands could sell more products, and therefore the identity of the designer played an important advertising role.

Another important figure of the Italian modernism period was Gio Ponti. Inspired by modernism's art movements, Ponti created new forms of objects. His asymmetrically balanced designs freed the Italian objects from their classic representations. The designer promoted Italian designs on famous exhibitions called 'Milan Triennale': "These exhibitions, organized as early as the 1920s… were responsible for increasing the visibility of Italian design in an international setting". After becoming an editor of Domus in 1947, Ponti contributed to Italian design of that time, but also: "the human and creative element in modern industrial design as well as its practical, economic and social benefits."[4] Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro, inspired by their designer predecessors, came up in 1968 with the design of Sacco, the "shapeless chair".[5] Although it was not the first design of an amorphous chair in Italian history, Sacco was the first successful product created in partnership with Zanotta. The predecessor of the product had a major design flaw of not being able to sustain its form and never reached production. Sacco addressed that flaw with the use of leather for the exterior and right placed stitching. The use of leather was not coincidental, as at that time the textile was an Italian national pride product. The target user of the chair was the lax, hippie community and their non-conformist household. "In an era characterized by the hippie culture, apartment sharing and student demonstrations, the thirty-something designers created a nonpoltrona (non-chair) and thus launched an attack on good bourgeois taste."

Sacco is part of the permanent collection of the most important museums of contemporary art throughout the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Sacco was part of the 1972 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Italy: The New Domestic Landscape - Achievements and Problems of Italian Design[6] and was awarded, in 1973, the BIO 5 at the Biennale of Design in Ljubljana. In 2020 Sacco received the prestigious Compasso d'Oro Award.[7]

Exhibitions

Collections

Awards

In popular culture

Sacco often appears in the strips Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

Other bean bag chair products inspired by Sacco

Other designers have followed the "shapeless" chair design, creating a range of inspired products that take after Sacco.[9] Amongst many, the most successful contemporary model would be Jukka Setala's Fatboy. The product launched in 2002 brought the Finnish designer global recognition. The new form of the bean bag chair has less stitching and a more geometrical take in the means of shape. It also has an EPS filling which is more durable than PVC.[10]

Bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Vitra Design Museum . Sacco . 25 September 2014.
  2. Web site: Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro Archivi . 2024-08-10 . Museo Omero . it-IT.
  3. Web site: MOMA. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Object lesson: Paola Antonelli. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20170424174448/http://www.christies.com/features/Object_lesson_Paolo_Antonelli-5621-1.aspx . 2017-04-24 . 2020-11-17. Museum of Modern Art, New York. en-US.
  4. Book: Raizman, David . May . Susie . History of Modern Design Second Edition . Laurence King Publishing . 2010 . 256–306 . Part V: Humanism and Luxury: International Modernism and Mass Culture after World War II (1945-1960) . 978-1-85669-694-4.
  5. Web site: 'Sacco' beanbag designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro. Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Australia.
  6. Web site: Italy: The New Domestic Landscape. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20160919111322/http://moma.org:80/calendar/exhibitions/1783? . 2016-09-19 . 2020-11-17. MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
  7. Web site: The winners of the 2020 Compasso d'Oro Awards . live. https://web.archive.org/web/20200912045529/https://www.domusweb.it/en/design/gallery/2020/09/09/the-winners-of-the-compasso-doro-awards.html . 2020-09-12 . 2020-11-17. Domus.
  8. Web site: SACCO . 2024-06-29 . ADI Design Museum . en-US.
  9. Web site: How to bag a beanbag chair . The Guardian . 2 June 2009 . 10 January 2014 . Griffiths, Sally.
  10. Web site: Fatboy original . https://web.archive.org/web/20170910125932/https://www.fatboy.com/nl/bean-bags/original . dead . 2017-09-10 . Fatboy . 2002 . 16 October 2014 . Fatboy .

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