by Ludovica Proietti
The piece, designed by the Spanish designer Ignacio Merino, can be intended as an example of how history and sight can work together, inspiring objects that are not the mere reinterpretation of past models but a new point of view on them and their role in our homes.
Can a chair from the past design the future of the domestic environment? Must inspiration come mandatorily from the house we will live in in the future, or can it come from ways of living that we have somehow forgotten? Can an idea arise from a dialogue with a book and a visit to a museum?
The curious story of the Mezzo Chair, by Ignacio Merino, ties all these elements together and answers these questions with a physical response and a design piece able to transcend the boundaries of past, present, and future with elements that are perfect to populate our homes. In this case, the chair he proposed and presented at the Seminario exhibition – the one that hosts younger designers and practices – at EDIT Napoli 2025 is a chameleonic piece, able to bring the functionality of the past into the modern home environment. But what does it mean that this chair was born from a dialogue with a book?
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Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
Work in Progress of the Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
Work in Progress of the Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
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Flipping through the pages of the design book As Found: Discovery of the Ordinary, published in 2001, and through the peculiar approach to the discipline that it presents, the Spanish designer working in the northern region of Trentino Alto Adige, in Italy, discovered that beautiful pieces can emerge from the observation of what surrounds us. The book, with its radical point of view on design – not driven by innovation or the discovery of something new, but more grounded in the idea that we must learn to see what surrounds us in a tangible and practical way – helped Merino to better understand that we already have solutions to reinterpret and bring back into the contemporary world.
Inspired by an 18th-century chair that the designer saw at the Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck – a curious object that stood between a stool and a chair, with a half-moon seat, taller than a typical chair, very compact and not as deep as we design chairs nowadays – the Mezzo Chair seeks to embrace this “new yesterday” feeling in a very contemporary piece. As compact as its inspiration, three-legged, sleek and light in appearance but very strong and stable in construction, the chair easily connects a designer’s eye for observation with inspiration drawn from everyday life, resulting in a curious piece that can easily populate our homes because of its compact form.
Work in Progress of the Mezzo Chair © Ignacio Merino
In this piece, we see how “the limitation of a concrete situation as the starting point sees itself as an opportunity and not a restriction of possibilities,” quoting the book, as Merino does. Technically, the designer worked by featuring only one material – beech wood – and synthesizing every other aspect. He also took a serious look at its ergonomics, including a very stable backrest that is inclined to guarantee perfect comfort even with very small depth. The inspiration that came from the ancient piece, in fact, translates into the same compact and chameleonic form, but with a contemporary feel. And with another quote from the past: the joint imitates that of Max Bill’s Tripod Chair (1949), developing a T-shaped element that connects the legs and the seat of the piece. The final result is a very simple element, able to inhabit our homes like a silent servant that, when noticed, has a lot to reveal without being invasive.
The lesson of Ignacio Merino and his Mezzo Chair is a history lesson, where design becomes a lens through which to look at reality and to discover old-new approaches to furnishing our spaces. A subtle piece, almost an accent in our homes, that is also perfect for our way of living in very small and narrow spaces without excluding beauty, functionality, and curiosity. A piece inspired by the past but not in a banal way, one that takes from the aesthetics and functionality of the past and blends them together into a piece that can speak about us, about how we live our lives in the present.
