In Eugene Ionesco's absurdist play
The Chairs
, chairs stand in for characters at the brink of the world's end. Artist and curator Andreas Angelidakis pays homage to Ionesco at Swiss Institute with
Fin de Siècle
, a fantastical and idiosyncratic narrative of design after modernism. Inspired by Ionesco's play, Angelidakis reanimates a number of important chairs from design history and popular culture, casting them in dramatic roles. As a document of Swiss Institute's inaugural Architecture and Design show, this volume includes a conversation on late-modernist design between Angelidakis and Beatrice Galilee, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at the Met; a dialogue on AirBnB's approach to space with Alessandro Bava, Aaron Taylor Harvey, Sean Monahan and Rachael Yu; an essay and specially created artist's book by Angelidakis; and a glossary of the chairs selected for the exhibition.