How many lectures and receptions have been made more insufferable than they really are by folding chairs? Regardless of the locale, a painted aluminum folding chair sends the message This event is not fancy and neither are you. The Flux folding chair sends an altogether different message. It certainly doesn’t look like a folding chair. Instead it resembles an origami zoo animal, the blossom of some hothouse flower, and, a little bit, Frank Gehry’s Flintstones-style molded plastic furniture. It certainly doesn’t feel like a folding chair. It’s made from a stiff grade of plastic that offers a sturdy seat, and its boxy base gives it a substantial mass. This folding chair sends the message on over and take a seat.
At the design fair where I first saw them, Flux had secured an unadorned corner booth and crowded it with white chairs. A tired-looking woman, thinking it was a cafe, came over and took a seat. The product rep cheerfully brushed aside her coffee order and seized the occasion to demonstrate how the chair folded, simply, into a flat package the size of a card table, and to explain how it could be slipped into the trunk of a car, underneath a bed, and into a closet. The woman closed her eyes and waved him away, which made it clear that the chair had passed the greatest test of all. She simply didn’t want to get up out of it.