Red Blue Lego Chair by Mario Minale

Mario Minale
Red Blue Lego Chair, 2004

Minale was inspired by the simple construction of Rietveld’s furniture. The designer made a remake of the famous Red and Blue Chair by the Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld by using Lego blocks because for him they represented the construction material of our age.

‘Lego makes personal expression easy. It is a material that empowers the unqualified to create by themselves. For Rietveld, it was boards cut to size at the sawmill that made his design accessible. One no longer had to go to the woods to chop a tree. For us, it is no longer about cutting and sawing, but rather about blocks that snap together, shiny finish included. Rietveld broke the chair into 14 pieces to make it easy. Lego breaks it into 4445 pieces, which makes it even more easy.

Lego is a basic toy, but the process of making a chair out of it became so complicated that it questioned the simplicity that Lego promised. The process I went through makes the chair an even more authentic copy’. — Mario Minale.

The Red Blue Lego Chair is part of the Centraal Museum Utrecht collection.