The Chickpea Chair traces how a tiny object made by a Neapolitan street child — a seat fashioned from half a clothes peg and two wooden fragments, sized to hold a chickpea — became the catalyst for drawings by Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, and Enzo Mari.
About This Book
In the 1970s, architect Riccardo Dalisi worked with street children in Naples, inviting them to build small furniture and architectural elements from the most elemental materials: wood, string, metal wire. What emerged from that radical participatory practice was not just a pedagogical experiment but a design philosophy. At its centre sits the Chickpea Chair — made by a young girl named Rosa — which Dalisi carried on his travels, asking luminaries of architecture and art to respond to it in drawing. This volume, produced for the exhibition Riccardo Dalisi. Radicalmente at MAXXI in Rome, assembles those drawings alongside critical texts, functioning as a manifesto for Dalisi's design ultrapoverissimo and his conviction that design belongs to everyone.
Key Features
- 144 pages of artists' drawings and critical texts responding to Dalisi's participatory design practice
- Curated by Gabriele Neri; texts by Stefano Boeri, Domitilla Dardi, Paolo Deganello, Fulvio Irace, Ugo La Pietra, Franco Purini, and Angela Tecce
- Works by Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Enzo Mari, and others
- Published by Corraini Edizioni, ISBN: 9791254930588
What You'll Discover
- How Dalisi's design ultrapoverissimo — using string, wire, and wood scraps — repositioned poverty and play as legitimate sites of architectural thinking
- The drawings that Warhol, Beuys, Sottsass, Mendini, and other major figures made in response to a single child's chair, revealing how a found object can function as a critical prompt
- The relationship between radical pedagogy, participatory design, and the Italian design avant-garde of the 1970s
- How a child's act of making — Rosa's chickpea-scaled chair — was received and reinterpreted by architects and critics including Stefano Boeri and Paolo Deganello
About the Author
Gabriele Neri is the curator of the exhibition Riccardo Dalisi. Radicalmente at MAXXI in Rome, for which this volume was produced. He contributes curatorial and critical framing to the book alongside a group of prominent architects and design critics.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 144
- Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9791254930588
- Publisher: Corraini Edizioni
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and designers interested in radical and participatory design history, scholars of Italian design and the avant-garde, and anyone drawn to the intersection of art, pedagogy, and material culture.