Morag Myerscough’s Sun Chair introduces the vibrant, fluorescent colours familiar from the designer’s wider practice, but which have not traditionally been associated with designing for older people (image: Alecio Ferrari).

Attitudes to ageing and approaches to design have both shifted significantly since the 1980s. When the Boilerhouse Project at the Victoria & Albert Museum staged its landmark New Design for Old exhibition in 1986, the issue of how to design for older people was framed in strictly clinical and utilitarian terms. Ageing was viewed as a medical disability that could be alleviated by functional design to make it easier and safer to do certain things in the home, such as cooking or bathing. Fifteen leading industrial designers were asked to propose new objects for independent senior living; I remember that the standout exhibit was a television set with a revolving head by Hartmut Esslinger of Frog Design, designed so that older people could watch TV lying down in bed. Such were the limits on ambition for this user group.

Thirty-five years later, the game has moved on for both ageing and design. Our understanding of what it means to grow older is now broader and richer. Dynamic ideas around healthy and active ageing in a “third age” of productive social engagement have begun to replace the passive image of the “elderly” confined to their own homes or institutional care. There is growing cultural interest in our longevity – unprecedented in human history. And as the “first teenagers” of the baby boomer generation tip over into old age, familiar stereotypes around ageing are becoming outdated.

Support the Elderly, by Helmut Smits, is an “active resting tool”. Smits converted the chair into two walking sticks, arguing for the importance of physical exercise, as well as transforming a chair for one person into an activity for two.

Benjamin Edgar’s Tired, but Quite Optimistic chair sees the slats of its seat incrementally sag, in a process described as a gradient from “rested to exhausted”. Throughout, the brilliant blue colouring is intended to express an abiding optimism.

Graphic artist Jean Jullien’s Raplapla chair is designed to express comfort. “I wanted to translate visually the feeling you get when you’re really tired and finally find a good seat to sit on and you can really let go,” Jullien explains.

Comedian Joe Lycett’s Chair Dunistrishuns provides all the guidance you need to assemble your own Nice Chair, designed by Tom Dicks On. “[You] wanna make a chair baby you can make a chair if you wanna baby,” adds Lycett.

Designed from pillows and fur scraps taken from shag scarves, Emma Brewin’s Shag Chair is fluffy and cuddly, resembling a hairy beastie as much as it does a piece of furniture.

Similarly, horizons have expanded in design with the rise of digital technology and other scientific advances, disrupting traditional standalone disciplines such as product, furniture or graphic design, and creating opportunities to innovate. The newer, cutting-edge disciplines of service, interaction or experience design integrate desire, need and function in more comprehensive ways. Cultural exploration has become as important as technical resolution across all fields of design.

The result of these changes is that we are now seeing a medical model of ageing (design to counter disease, dependency and death) being replaced with a social model of ageing (design to support social interaction and personal productivity) and even a cultural model (design to explore this phase of life as rich and unique). When I was recently asked to re-curate the original 1986 New Design for Old exhibition for a contemporary audience at the Design Museum (whose forerunner was the Boilerhouse Project), I retained a focus on the home but radically augmented the show with new sections covering identity, mobility, work and community to reflect the bigger ambitions and new, broader landscape of design for ageing.

It is within this enriched context that we encounter the 19 Chairs project by brothers Tom and Will Butterfield, an initiative conceived amid the global pandemic and aimed at supporting two charities, Age UK and Resourcing Racial Justice. The Butterfields designed and constructed a unique wooden chair every day over 19 days of lockdown and then shipped them to 19 creatives with a brief to “reinvent, reimagine or redesign your chair with an older person in mind”.

Rubber by Sabine Marcellis: a sheet of rubber wraps around the seat and backrest for comfort, with the translucency of the material revealing the underlying wood structure when hit by sunlight.

Tom Dixon’s Foil is a seat designed for a specific older person: the astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

The Commode by Harry Grundy places a cactus in the centre of the seat, accompanying it with a poem reflecting on the passage of time: “Mewling, puking, whining, shining, signing, bearded, seeking full. Lean and slippered, manly, childish, youthful, shrunk, seeking, full.”

“A complicated magic trick,” Max Siedentopf’s Rebirth restores his chair into “a younger and rebellious version of itself[...] before it got assembled into something to sit on.” The artist keeps his method a secret.

James Shaw’s Extruded Chair with Blob Hand Rest creates a back and feet for the design out of waste plastic, extruded by a machine of Shaw’s own design. A “creepy hand rest” completes the work.

Grandma’s Antique, designed by Brandon Carlton, retains much of the original structure of the chair, but its finish is inspired by Carlton’s grandmother’s love of gold. “I grew up watching her paint her toes whilst sitting in our living room,” he explains, “which was full of antiques.”

Bringing in a range of designers echoes the tactics of both New Design for Old exhibition and my follow-up, New Old, which was centred around six design commissions. However, the centrality and simplicity of a single object gives the 19 Chairs project its raw cultural power to explore ageing through design. The result is an eclectic and imaginative collection of ideas and embellishments, sometimes frivolous and sometimes philosophical. Everyone will have their own favourites. Mine include Tom Dixon’s aspirational foil-covered chair for Buzz Aldrin; Emma Brewin’s cushioned Shag Chair made of shag scarves and pillows; and Benjamin Edgar’s blue-painted Tired, but Quite Optimistic chair with its drooping seat profile.

Exhaustion is frequently referenced in the collection, but also rebirth and renewal – not just in terms of repurposing the furniture but in seeing new possibilities in later life. This is what design brings to ageing now. No longer confined to fitness for purpose or else addressing medical emergency, it speaks more expansively of dreams and memories.

Words Jeremy Myerson

Images Alecio Ferrari

This article was originally published in Disegno #29. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.

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