Bean bag chair

The Sacco chair (also known as a beanbag chair, or simply a beanbag), is a large pear-shaped bag or sack (Italian: sacco) made of leather or fabric and filled with expanded polystyrene foam pellets ('beans') or a similar material. It is an example of anatomic design, as the user's body determines its form. The Sacco chair was designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro in 1968, and became "one of the icons of the Italian anti-design movement. Its complete flexibility and formlessness made it the perfect antidote to the static formalism of mainstream Italian furniture of the period" according to design historian Penny Spark.^[1][2][3]

Sacco

Designer	Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro
Date	1968
Made in	Italy
Materials	Leather or textile (shell), expanded polystyrene (filling)
Style / tradition	Italian Radical design
Sold by	Zanotta S.p.A.
Collection	ADI Design Museum, Centre Pompidou, Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, et al.

The Sacco chair was awarded the Compasso d'Oro, and is in the collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and ADI Design Museum in Milan.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]}

History

Sacco was introduced in 1968 by three Italian designers: Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro (it).^[2] The object was created during the Radical period of the Italian modernist movement, and was highly inspired by newly available materials and technologies.^[10] Post-war technology enabled an increase in production processes by introducing new materials, such as polystyrene. The idea of mass-produced goods at an affordable price range appealed to consumers. This, in turn, created the need for a revolution in the creative and manufacturing processes.^{[citation needed]}

The architect, Cesare Paolini, was born in Genoa and graduated from the Polytechnic University of Turin. Franco Teodoro and Piero Gatti, the designers, studied at the Istituto Tecnico Industriale Statale per le Arti Grafiche e Fotografiche in Turin. They established their architecture firm in Turin in 1965.^{[11][12][13][14]}

From left to right, Franco Teodoro, Cesare Paolini and Piero Gatti, creator of Sacco, in Paris in 1969

Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro, inspired by their designer predecessors, came up in 1968 with the design of Sacco, the "shapeless chair".^[3] Although it was not the first design of an amorphous chair in Italian history, Sacco was the first successful product created in partnership with Zanotta. The predecessor of the product had a significant design flaw. It was unable to sustain its form and never reached production. Sacco addressed that flaw with the use of leather for the exterior and carefully placed stitching. The use of leather was not coincidental, as it was a product of national pride in Italy at that time.^[15] The target user of the chair was the hippie community, as their non-conformist values aligned with the chair's unconventional design.

Sacco is part of the permanent collection of the most important museums of contemporary art throughout the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Sacco was part of the 1972 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Italy: The New Domestic Landscape – Achievements and Problems of Italian Design.^[16]

In 2025, the Sacco was included in Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art featuring "widely recognized design icons [...] highlighting pivotal moments in design history."^[17][18][19]

Awards

The Sacco was recognised with a M.I.A. award at the 1968 Mostra Internazionale dell'Arredamento in Monza,^[20] and received the 1973 BIO 5 award at the Biennale of Design in Ljubljana.^{[citation needed]}

In 2020, exactly fifty years after the design was first overlooked by the ADI jury, failing to win the 1970 award, the Sacco chair received the Compasso d'Oro Award and was added to the collection of the ADI Design Museum in Milan.^[7][5][4]

Exhibitions

The bean bag chair has been prominently featured in several exhibitions, highlighting its significance in the realm of design and art history. At the Museum of Modern Art, New York, it was included in the Recent Acquisitions: Design Collection exhibition from 1 December 1970 to 31 January 1971, and later in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, held from 26 May to 11 September 1972. It also appeared at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968, from 7 October 1994 to 22 January 1995, which subsequently traveled to the Triennale di Milano (February–May 1995) and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (May–September 1995).

The Museum of Modern Art, New York revisited the bean bag chair in its Architecture and Design: Inaugural Installation, displayed from 20 November 2004 to 7 November 2005. More recently, it was featured at the Kanal–Centre Pompidou in Brussels as part of the Phantom Offices exhibition, held from 23 January to 30 June 2019. In September 2019, the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris included the bean bag chair in Architects' Furniture: 1960–2020. Lastly, it appeared in the Déjà-vu. Le design dans notre quotidien exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain in Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, which ran from 15 December 2020 to 22 August 2021.^[21]

Collections

• ADI Design Museum, Milan^[4]
• Brücke-Museum, Berlin
• Centro Arte e Design, Calenzano
• Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
• Denver Art Museum, Denver
• Fondazione Triennale Design Museum, Milan
• Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain, Dunkerque
• Israel Museum, Jerusalem
• Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin
• Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf
• Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes^[21]
• Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris^[22]
• Musée National d'Art Moderne (Centre Pompidou), Paris^[8]
• Museo dell'arredo contemporaneo, Russi (Ra)
• Museo Omero (it), Ancona, Italy^[11]
• Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna^[23]
• Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
• Museum of Applied Arts, Leipzig^[24]
• Museum of Modern Art, New York^[6]
• Museum voor Sierkunst en Vormgeving, Gent
• National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne^[25]
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia^[26]
• Powerhouse Museum (MAAS), Sydney^[3]
• Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri
• Shiodome Italia Creative Center, Tokyo
• Taideteollisuusmuseo Konstindustrimuseet, Helsinki
• Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
• Thessaloniki Design Museum, Thessaloniki
• Uměleckoprůmyslové Muzeum, Prague
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London^[27]
• Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein^[2]

In popular culture

Franco Teodoro (it) reclining comfortably on a Sacco chair

Sacco often appears in the Peanuts comic strips of Charles M. Schulz.^[20]

The Italian actor Paolo Villaggio uses the Sacco as a comedy sight gag in the 1981 Italian comedy Fracchia la belva umana by Neri Parenti.^[28][20][29]

Other companies and designers have created products, DIY kits, and homemade versions inspired by the original Sacco.^[30][31]

Bibliography

• Paola Antonelli (Museum of Modern Art | MOMA), Sacco Chair | Object Lesson
• Ingrid Halland, The unstable object: Glifo, Blow, Sacco at MoMA, 1972, Journal of Design History, Volume 33, Issue 4, December 2020, Pages 329–345, Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epz051
• Cindi Strauss, Germano Celant, J. Taylor Kubala, Radical – Italian Design 1965–1985 – The Dennis Freedman Collection, Yale University Press, 2020
• Mel Byars, The Design Encyclopedia, New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994
• Emilio Ambasz [a cura di], Italy: The New Domestic Landscape – Achievements and Problems of Italian Design, New York, Museum Of Modern Art, 1972
• Margaret Timmers, The Way We Live Now: Designs for Interiors 1950 to the Present Day, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1978
• Grace Lees-Maffei, Kjetil Fallan [editors], Made in Italy Rethinking a Century of Italian Design, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014
• Paola Antonelli, Matilda McQuaid, Objects of Design from the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), 2003
• Bernhard E. Bürdek, Design Storia, Teoria e Pratica del Design del Prodotto, Roma, Gangemi Editore, 2008
• Victoria and Albert Museum. Circulation Department, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Modern Chairs 1918–1970, London: Lund Humphries. 1971
• Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, New York: 1974
• Moderne Klassiker, Mobel, die Geschichte machen, Hamburg, 1982
• Kathryn B. Hiesinger and George H. Marcus III (eds.), Design Since 1945, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1983
• Fifty Chairs that Changed the World: Design Museum Fifty, London's Design Museum, London, ISBN 978-1-84091-540-2
• Charlotte Fiell, Peter Fiell, Plastic dreams: synthetic visions in design, Carlton Books Ltd, 2010, ISBN 978-1-906863-08-1
• Anne Bony, Design: History, Main Trends, Major Figures, Larousse/Chambers, 2005
• Bernd Polster, Claudia Newman, Markus Schuler, The A–Z of Modern Design, Merrell Publishers Ltd, 2009, ISBN 978-1-85894-502-6
• Domitilla Dardi, Il design in cento oggetti, Federico Motta Editore, Milano, 2008, ISBN 978-88-7179-586-7
• Anty Pansera, Il Design del mobile italiano dal 1946 a oggi, Laterza, 1990
• Charles Boyce, Joseph T. Butler, Dictionary of Furniture, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2014, ISBN 978-1-62873-840-7
• Michael Tambini, The Look of the Century, DK Pub., 1999, ISBN 978-0-7894-4635-0
• AA.VV., 100 objects of Italian design La Triennale di Milano: Permanent Collection of Italian Design, The Milan Triennale, Gangemi Editore
• Germano Celant [ed.], preface by Umberto Eco,The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968, Guggenheim Museum Publications, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-8109-6871-1
• Fiorella Bulegato, Elena Dellapiana, Il design degli architetti italiani 1920–2000, Mondadori Electa, 2014, ISBN 978-88-370-9562-8