CHAIR Definition & Usage Examples

What makes a chair, a chair? What does an Apple designer and a controversial Professor have to say?

The intuition of the modern scientific human would be to list the physical, sensory characteristics of what we consider chairs.

Figure 1 This is a chair as conceptualized by Ikea

1. A chair has 4 legs... although I can imagine a chair with 3 or even 5
2. A chair usually has arms and a back... although a stool fits in the chair category without either
3. It must be raised above the ground... although things that aren't chairs also do this in a similar way...

It's hard to give a strict definition of a chair or any category of object. Some would say it's impossible. 

Even if you think of a category of objects (like 'chairs') as a set of characteristics that objects fulfil to a certain degree, it doesn't help answer if something should be considered a chair. To what degree could shrubbery be a chair?

So what makes a chair a chair... according to Designers?

In Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things (DOET), he argues that objects should be thought of in terms of affordances, that is, "the relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used." This is cornerstone to what he calls Human Centred Design (dog toy manufacturers might disagree).

The affordance (pun intended) of this idea is that it concerns the eventual function of an object, which some people think is strictly the job of engineers not designers (they are certainly wrong). Whether or not a chair is good at being a chair depends if it has physical characteristics allowing us to sit on it and that those physical characteristics are both accessible and intuitive.

Figure 2 This is a chair as conceptualized by Ikea but immersed in epoxy (use your imagination). Is it still a chair?

Consider the following... exceptional... set of chairs

Figure 3 "The Uncomfortable is a collection of deliberately inconvenient everyday objects by Athens-based architect Katerina Kamprani." More at www.theuncomfortable.com. Are these chairs?

A consequence of the affordance-definition of objects is that a chair immersed in epoxy or a chair that is sufficiently inconvenient is not, in fact, a chair. They aren't chairs because they don't afford sitting.

I'm inclined to agree with this idea. To carve that chair out of the epoxy is as much of a creative process as carving a chair out of a block of wood, which certainly isn't a chair until its carved... or if you can sit on top of the whole block. Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have visualized his sculptures inside the stone he chiselled. The imagined potential affordances of his unfinished sculptures are not enough for the sculpture-in-progress to afford the beauty that evokes awe in onlookers.

So what defines a chair? It's something that you can sit on. Sitting mediates the relationship of an object to people that turns a tree stump into a chair or a broken chair into garbage.

This is very interesting, for unintuitive reasons.

The idea that objects are defined by their relationship to humans defies the idea that the world is understood by its materialistic properties. Physics pays no attention to the meaning of objects. Science cannot answer 'why'; only 'what' and 'how'. 

Also, this means that the definition of an object is context dependent. If food is that which is to be eaten, it is food if you're hungry, but it is something else when you are on a diet and you've reached your calorie limit for the day. It's questionable that the potential to be eaten is enough to call something food. In desperate times, even shoe leather can become food (simply by a change in context). Meaning and definitions in this perspective are fluid and at the whim of context.

We live in a scientific age yet here we find that the thing that is most effective for people to understand the universe and all the objects contained within it is not the physical properties of something but its significance for action. Not to mention, the meaning of objects is intuitively more important. Does it matter that red-hot steel is hot in so far as we know not to touch it?

Figure 4 The cover art for the audiobook of Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson. I would not recommend this as an audiobook partly because of the disproportionately thick, jargonistic word choice that would be easier to digest visually. Also, there are figures accompanying the book that are easier to juggle in a physical book.

Jordan B Peterson (JBP), a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto is controversial for his political activity. Although in his book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, his profound ideas are hidden behind a wall of thesaurus-happy writing, JBP conveys very interesting thoughts about the meaning of physical objects.

In chapter 7 of Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson says,

"Is a tree stump a chair? Yes, if you can sit on it." - Jordan B Peterson

He goes on to claim that what makes a chair, a chair is not its physical attributes but "is rather something about its potential for interaction with us." Does this ring a bell? This is exactly Don Howard's definition of affordances. But, remember, this is outside the realm of Design. This is the realm of the definition of objects themselves, full stop.

Are we getting a little bit egotistical here? We're claiming that the thing that defines things is what they mean to human beings. That makes sense in design where things are designed for people, yet the idea springs up in larger discussions about how people experience and understand the world around them. Certainly, human biology doesn't give any insight into whether or not a person should pursue a degree in STEM, business or the Arts.

How can we make any decisions if it necessarily requires deciding that one state of the universe is better than another? Where do we get a sense of direction? What is the significance of action that the universe begs us to take?

To quickly touch on these profound and consequential questions, Jordan Peterson suggests that often what guides our actions is narratives whether it's deciding to call a loved one every week or deciding to buy a ticket to Vancouver Startup Week (which you should consider). This topic goes deep into the nature of psychology, myth and language. In the world-as-drama, human beings engage in symbolic action where physical objects concern us only in so far as they contribute to our narratives or myths and thus, our actions. This concerns design and branding in particular. For more on this, I would recommend Chapter 6 of Kenneth Burke's On Symbols and Society, Language as Action: Terministic Screens as well as part two of Roland Barthes' Mythologies, Myth Today.

For one last thought about our original question, "what makes a chair, a chair", perhaps the most trivial, least helpful answer is "a chair is a chair is a chair". Anyway.

TL;DR What makes a chair a chair is its ability to be sat on. An object is only in its category of objects so long as it fulfils its defining use to people. A chair must afford sitting to be a chair, or it seizes to be a chair and is reduced to nothing but void material.