Red No 03 Assembled Stool by Studio Wieki Somers

As a response to the extremely fast growing metropolis Beijing, in which temporality and obsolescence seem to menace each and every object, they focused on the small things of daily street life. In the most varied parts of the capital we would find customized seats used by people such as security guards, street vendors or rickshaw drivers. We were fascinated by the many charming details of these primitive seats, the way the various materials and parts were connected and the relationship to their respective makers. The stools, probably cherished for a lifetime, testify to a long history in which both the maker and the user leave their traces. We purchased some of these stools and cast them in aluminium. A way for us to pay homage to them, and an answer to China’s famous culture of copying.