The Plia folding chair is the best-known work of the Italian designer Giancarlo Piretti. When designing the Plia between 1967 and 1969, Piretti focused particularly on the folding mechanism. Instead of the usual six joints, he decided to concentrate the whole mechanism on two joints on either side of the seat. These aluminium joints, each divided into three segments, integrate the whole supporting structure made of flattened tubular steel. The inner segment is joined to the frame of the seat, whilst the U-shaped back legs end in the middle segment. The front legs and backrest run through the outer joint segment. As the seat and back legs fit perfectly into the outer frame when the chair is folded, it becomes extremely flat in this position, only five centimetres. In an unfolded position several chairs can be stacked into one another.
The seat and backrest made of transparent Cellidor have screwed-on chrome-plated tubular steel edges. Depressions impressed in the plastic surfaces – semicircular in the backrest and round in the seat – improve both seating comfort and the visual appeal of the chair. The chair was introduced to the public at the 1969 Milan Furniture Fair. In 1972, it appeared in the exhibition 'Italy: The New Domestic Landscape' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a year later it received the Gute Form prize from the German Design Council. Between 1969 and 2003 over seven million pieces of this extremely popular model were sold.
Text: Mathias Remmele
