There are places in NYC that I’m not a regular to as much as I should. A83 is right up at the top of the list. It isn’t a difficult location to get to, center of SOHO, and there’s not appointment hurdles. For whatever reason, I haven’t gotten a habit formed.
While the typical exhibition type is architectural drawings, STOOLS is the first that I know of to feature only furniture pieces. The show is a collaboration between A83 and architectural entertainment magazine PIN-UP, featuring a cross continent collection of 44 stools from designers in NYC and Berlin. Beyond interpretations of what a contemporary stool is, there’s no deeper theme or brief the pieces were created against. So it’s more of a designer talent show.
My trained design eye always looks for strong ideas, beautiful shapes and use benefits first. There were a few here that held my interest. “Fuzzy Stool,” by Office of Tangible Space and Strömer Mutroniks incorporates a guitar amp into a blocky aluminum stool for seated headphone jam sessions. A couple of the stools were variations on bent sheet metal and those stood out as the most industrial design style pieces of the show.
For other pieces here, it feels like a retread of the functional art/collectible design stuff that’s been around for getting on a decade now. I still default to categorizing as either design or modern craft and that makes filtering a group show like this much easier.
Full Description
STOOLS
Curated by A83, Barkow Leibinger, and PIN–UP
83 Grand Street, New York
09/25/2026 – 12/05/26
A83, Barkow Leibinger, and PIN-UP are pleased to present STOOLS, an exhibition bringing together 44 stools by Berlin and New York-based architects and designers. The exhibition is a sequel to Hocker”stools” in German-the Berlin-based exhibition curated by Barkow Leibinger in 2025.
Ubiquitous throughout a designer’s career, the stool’s modest scale, range of materials, and shifting utility make it a revealing design problem. Around a large table on Grand Street, provocations from both cities engage with the ideas, mediums, and techniques shaping design today.
Carson Chan writes, on the occasion of the exhibition:
In his 1948 book Mechanization Takes Command, architectural historian Sigfried Giedion mused on the various ways people sat in the Middle Ages: on stairs, on the ground, on cushions, on benches, rarely on chairs, and most often on stools. Analyzing a French frontispiece depicting a courtroom in session and a Dutch engraving of a lively kitchen scene, both from the mid-fifteenth century, Giedion was doing more than making an observation about posture. He was pointing to the co-constitutive relationship between people and the world they inhabit.
“Posture,” he writes, “reflects the inner nature of a period.”
Featured stools contributed by Andy Kim and Adin Rimland, ANY, Aranda\ Lasch, Casey Mack / POPA, Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Chibbernoonie, David Andrew Tasman, Johnston Marklee, Jonathan Muecke, Jonathan Olivares, Wentreek, Zebulon, Leon Ransmeier, Leong Leong, Luam Melake, Minjae Kim, MOS, Nifemi Ogunro, Norman Kelley, Objects of Common Interest, Office Ben Ganz, Office of Tangible Space, Strömer Mutroniks, Olivia, Vigo, Rich Aybar, Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu, 1×1 Systems, Barkow, Leibinger, DAFTAR, GONZALEZ HAASE AAS / MARBLEDWORKS, Hannah Kuhlmann, Herzog & de Meuron, Ilya Goldman Gubin, Johanna Karges, Büro Meyer-Grohbrügge, 25kg / Konstantin Gric, LOTTO Studio, Marcel Strauß, Mariami Kurtishvili, Monika, Obscure Objects, Oliver-Selim Boualam, Reidar Mester, Sam Chermayeff Office, Studio , and Vivien Hoffmann.
Photos and Text: Dave Pinter
