Crumpled uprising

Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro: Sacco, 1967/68

Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro had the idea to create an armchair that, like snow, would adapt to the body shape of a person. They had to experiment for a long time to find the ideal material. The result is a beanbag filled with polystyrene balls.

Another advantage: polystyrene is much lighter than a comparable filling of sand or water.

The beanbag was created at a time when teenagers and young adults were rebelling against the adult world. When these young people left home, many of them wanted to do things differently than their parents, also in terms of furnishing their homes. The beanbag was the most blatant possible contrast to ‘Daddy’s armchair’ that one could imagine.