The common wisdom with stacking chairs is that each one should be identical. Place one atop another, and the stack grows. But Strasbourg, France-based designer Paul Menand's take is a bit more sophisticated: Since 2009 he's been working on stacking chairs that are complementary. Through clever engineering, he's managed to create the Chaise Triplette, a single chair that breaks into three:
Skeptics will point out that the ginger way in which he handles them in the video indicates the chairs' fragility, but these are presumably prototypes made of wood; using a stronger, compound material, we could see these working just fine. Color us impressed.
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