Maïté Seimetz

D.E.D. Armchair
D.E.D. Armchair is an object design project situated at the intersection of art, technical experimentation and critical reflection. Three-dimensionally printed from a biodegradable filament composed of wood fibre and biocellulose, the armchair subscribes to an approach of «digital craftsmanship» combining digital sculpture, additive manufacturing and manual finishing. Its conception is based on a narrative approach wherein the object becomes as much a bearer of meaning as of function.
Between familiarity and uncanny strangeness, the project reinterprets the X-shaped chair known as the Dante chair, a symbol of power in the Italian Renaissance, associated with political and religious elites. Historically manufactured from noble wood and richly ornamented, it materialised an explicit hierarchy: a functional object in service to its master. D.E.D. Armchair subverts this formal heritage to question the relationship of domination between user and furniture. Here, the armchair is no longer a passive element, but an ambiguous actor that blurs the boundary between servitude and autonomy. It interrogates the «dog eat dog» order of contemporary design, wherein the value of an object is measured principally by its performance and productivity.
Formally, the chair adopts an anthropomorphic language: organic and mutated forms, evoking faces and bodies, suggest a presence, indeed an autonomous will. This ambiguous physicality provokes a contradictory reaction: the object invites one to sit whilst simultaneously provoking hesitation. Its grimace seems to question the user: who dominates whom?
Inspired by Baroque and Art Déco aesthetics as well as by the biomechanics of H. R. Giger, the project challenges the anthropocentrism of design and proposes a reading of the object that is not merely functional, but relational and existential.
The object thus inscribes itself within a broader reflection on co-existence and sustainable relationships between humans and objects. By valorising malfunction as an act of resistance against a society obsessed with efficiency, D.E.D. Armchair champions a vision of design wherein longevity, heritage and affective charge take precedence over mere performance.