Repaired Director’s Chair by Paulo Goldstein Studio

With Repaired Director’s Chair, Brazilian-born designer Paulo Goldstein explores the concept of resolution. Goldstein found this broken chair in a bin near his home; its backrest was missing and the wood was cracked. A previous owner had tried to fix it with nails, making the problem even worse. Inspired by suspension bridges and mast rigging, Goldstein constructed a foldable, lateral steel structure and attached it to the base of the chair, thereby transferring the tension of the cables back into the chair and holding things in place. The repairs returned all the functionality of the original chair, including the folding action.
This piece is part of Goldstein’s Repair Is Beautiful series. According to the designer, “A broken object delivers frustration because it doesn’t achieve its functionality, but the same principle applies to a broken system that caused the financial crisis, which has affected our lives since 2008. In a time of uncertainty, taking things into our own hands and having the feeling of control back can be very therapeutic. Repair is Beautiful aims to give back this feeling of control—by scaling down a major society problem to a human size and projecting frustration upon broken objects that can be repaired through design and craftsmanship.”