100 Years100 Chairs

Presented across Heide’s Main Galleries and Heide Modern, 100 Years | 100 Chairs surveys a century of chair design from Marcel Breuer’s revolutionary B3 Wassily Chair of 1925–27 to Chris Connell’s 3D-printed Kathedra of 2026. Bringing together the work of designers from around the world, the exhibition reveals the chair as a laboratory for experimentation in form, structure, materials, and comfort. Thematic sections trace developments in bentwood and tubular steel, moulded plastics, sustainable composites, digital fabrication, and more, and explore shifting aesthetics from modernism and postmodernism to minimalism and contemporary hybridity. A final section presents chairs created by artists, where function gives way to sculpture, provocation, and poetic expression. By juxtaposing icons with these expressive works, 100 Years | 100 Chairs reveals how designers and artists alike have continually reimagined what a chair can be, transforming everyday seating into a site of creative vision, technological progress, cultural commentary and social change.