One of the most influential works of contemporary design from the past twenty years is joining an international museum collection.
There are projects that transcend the boundaries of their own time, transforming from research exercises into true milestones in design culture. Martino Gamper’s 100 Chairs in 100 Days is one of them. Launched in London in 2007 as a 100-day experiment dedicated to transforming salvaged chairs, the project helped redefine the debate on reuse, authorship, and the design process, influencing generations of designers and sparking new reflections on the relationship between objects, memory, and transformation. Today, nearly twenty years after its creation, the entire series is being added to an international museum collection, marking a new chapter in the project’s history.
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100 Chairs in 100 Days, installlation at Triennale Design Museum Milano, ©Archivio fotografico Triennale Design Museum, ph. Fabrizio Marchesi
From the very beginning, Martino Gamper has focused his work on the transformation of existing objects. Moving between design, art, and craftsmanship, the designer has developed an approach that prioritizes process, experimentation, and the reinterpretation of forms and materials already present in the world around us. This vision finds its most recognizable expression in 100 Chairs in 100 Days. For 100 consecutive days, the designer collected discarded chairs from the streets, private homes, and flea markets, working on a different chair each day through cutting, assembling, and recombining. The result is a series of 100 unique pieces that defy traditional design categories. Each chair retains traces of its original history, yet at the same time takes on a new identity. More than a collection of objects, 100 Chairs in 100 Days serves as an open reflection on the transformative potential of design and on the possibility of generating value from what already exists.
Martino Gamper, © Filippo Pincolini
Since its first presentation, the work has embarked on a long international journey that has taken it to institutions such as the Triennale di Milano, the Benaki Museum in Athens, MIMOCA in Japan, the RMIT Design Hub in Melbourne, and the City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand. However, this journey would have been very different without the involvement of Nina Yashar and Nilufar.
In 2009, when the project was still in the early stages of its exhibition history, Nilufar, the founder of the Milanese gallery, decided to acquire the entire series of one hundred chairs. This was by no means an obvious choice; it stemmed from the realization that the work’s value lies in its totality rather than in the individual chairs considered as standalone pieces. Since then, Nilufar has curated the project as a unified body of work, preserving its integrity and guiding its journey through exhibitions, institutional loans, research initiatives, and publications.
From a contemporary perspective, 100 Chairs in 100 Days can be seen as an early example of the principles that today define collectible design. Not because it originated within the limited-edition market, but because it anticipates one of its most significant structures: the idea of the work as a system, rather than as a single object.
This shift resonates with many practices in contemporary collectible design, which are increasingly linked to curation, storytelling, and the series conceived as a total work of art. In this light, the strength of Gamper’s project lies in its ambiguity: conceived as an anti-industrial and anti-typological gesture, it ultimately proves surprisingly compatible with the logic of collecting precisely because of its process-oriented and open nature.
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Nina Yashar e Martino Gamper, © Filippo Pincolini
Nearly twenty years later, this vision is now receiving significant recognition. The entire series has, in fact, been acquired by a prestigious international museum, whose name will be announced in the coming months. This development definitively establishes the role of 100 Chairs in 100 Days within the history of contemporary design and confirms the significance of a body of work capable of influencing generations of designers far beyond the time of its creation.
Before the project is transferred to the museum’s collection, this will be one of the last opportunities to view it in Milan. On June 30, 2026, Nilufar will bring together, on an exceptional basis, a selection of the one hundred chairs at the Nilufar Warehouse for an evening that celebrates not an ending, but the beginning of a new phase in their history. During the event, Martino Gamper will also carry out restoration work on the pieces, continuing the practice of care and transformation that has always accompanied the project’s evolution.
This gesture is perfectly in line with the nature of 100 Chairs in 100 Days: a project born from the idea that objects can continually transform and take on new meanings. Today, with its inclusion in an international museum collection, the project itself is poised to assume a new identity, continuing to tell its story to future generations.
Tag: Design collectible Mostre Milan Nilufar Depot Nilufar Gallery
© Fuorisalone.it — All rights reserved. — Published on 25 June 2026
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