Those terrible, trendy metal chairs

[Robin Garr]

Does anyone out there actually like those terrible yet trendy restaurant chairs?

awful-chairs.png

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwbp ... harebutton

No. But I have sat on worse: chairs that fell apart, chairs with a nail sticking out that caught on my pants cuffs, and chairs that still had wet paint across the back (you can imagine my reaction to that one!).

I have heard before about seats being designed to be comfortable for only a certain period of time. I once read an article about the public spaces created by fast food restaurants. That author said the principle was that the restaurant should be comfortable, inviting, pleasant - in short, feel like home - for 20 minutes, and then you should urgently want to leave.

Leaving aside japes about home dinner tables, it is a generally interesting topic: how we sculpt shared spaces to be more or less social (...what art professors call sociopetal vs sociofugal spaces).

For some reason several of the Mexican restaurants around here (New England) have massive, carved wooden chairs that are so heavy it's difficult to move them to the table after you sit down in them.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I had a jagged edge of a leg of one of those once tear my pants leg. Not happy! But at least there's a spine down the back--I'm very uncomfortable in any chair that doesn't offer back support. But man they're ugly.

Somebody must like them, but I’m not one.
There are soo many badly designed chairs, uncomfortable in general, lacking back support, the seat cuts off circulation in the legs, Really how hard can it be to design a chair and then sit in it for a few hours and see if it works.
And then there are the banquettes, which all seem to be so low that you practically have your nose in your dinnner.
Having Graham Kerr on the table (a book by him not the man himself you understand) he says he wants a dining chair that he can sit in comfortably for 3 hours. His preference, and this reflects on the time it was written, he recommends moulded fibre with a pedestal base, no snags, no legs in the way.
likewise he suggested the dining table should have a single pedestal as well which removes the problem of table legs in the way of diners legs.

Actually, an office type gas lift chair, might address Lots of these issues. There must be lots of ergonomic research about chair design out there which could be applied to seating other than office.