Badirondack Chairs
Beware of complimentary furniture at any gentrification-style apartment complex. It's mostly pure rubbish with a veneer of ripped-off designer style lacking in any regard for resilience or ergonomics. A recent trip down to the courtyard of my building, snobbish design book in hand, spurred thoughts on two relatively mundane chair models located there.
RealComfort Adirondack Chair, $29
Despite its immediately apparent fragility, it and its identical brethren all had cracks in their structure, I gravitated towards this red plastic chair. Upon sitting down I felt something quite novel for an Adirondack chair— Lumbar support. This chair takes advantage of its molded material to help the human body by adding a rounded area at the lower back. In every other aspect though, rather than embracing plastic’s own intrinsic round and smooth beauty, the designer made effort to imitate a wooden chair of straight lines and grain. The additional work put in for this unnecessary imitation ends up detracting from the chair’s overall quality.
Despite my gripes mentioned above, this chair is exponentially more comfortable than the sturdier chairs beside it. It is no secret that the modern Adirondack chair is not meant to be comfortable (and if I'm being honest, the original design isn't ideal for the human body either). It's meant to be produced at low cost, which has permitted its ubiquity in modern America. Ditching the original design's attractive and honest wide planks, the modern wood design uses thinner planks that are much easier to source, cut and arranged in an entirely different manner so the chair doesn't break under weight.
POLYWOOD Classic Folding Adirondack Chair, $269
This aforementioned second chair may be robust and flamboyant, yet it provides more support to a cardboard box than a human body. The planks, made from recycled plastics and vivid pigments, are cut from three standardized sizes, assembled with hinges that allow the chair to collapse for storage. Completely opposite to the plastic chair, this chair put effort into every aspect except comfort. Its cost is ten times higher.
Neither chair is good. I just find fascinating the design consideration differences between the two. That's all for today. Be good to yourselves, and sit in whatever damn chair feels right.
