Not like this: furniture that beats up design

Before starting this article, it should be pointed out that everyone has their own philias and phobias, all of them respectable, about what is or is not aesthetic for them. Taste is a personal and very subjective matter. As the popular saying goes, to each his own. And may it continue to be so! Because without diversity, difference and divergence of opinions, the world would be a boring place. We enter the shifting sands of taste and we do so with a particular opinion, as debatable as any other.

Having clarified this point, this time we talk about horrible furniture, design monstrosities -always from our perspective, as we mentioned before- with which the anti-decoration, if such a thing exists, is more than assured. Sometimes the line between originality and ‘bad taste’ is too thin. Certain furniture opens the door, drawer, surface or seat to change the creative adjective for many others: extravagant, bizarre, horrendous, freakish, tacky and so on and so forth.

In many of these cases, design is totally divorced from functionality, resulting in pieces in which all practicality has been forgotten. There will be those who defend the art of these pieces. In these cases, Piero Manzoni‘s ‘La mierda de artista’ comes to mind, a conceptual artist who bottled his own feces and sold them at the price of gold to criticize the situation of the art market, in which a recognized signature is enough for any work to reach astronomical prices.

In recent times, numerous pieces of furniture that would fall into the category of ‘difficult to see and even more difficult to use’ have been circulating on the web. These are pieces that should be labeled ‘awkward furniture’. In 2008 they even created the Oops Awards, which distinguished the worst in industrial design with three categories: the ugliest, the most useless and the most ridiculous. The initiative came from a group of design and architecture experts led by designer Andrej Statskij. A jury of experts chose the winners from among those nominated by Internet users.Inspired by his ‘taste’ for bad taste, we couldn’t resist ranking the 10 ugliest and most useless pieces of furniture in the history of design.1. Galloping closet. We start the list with a 2009 Oops first prize winner for his ridiculous design: Martin, the Mule, by I Bride.

2. The smoked piggy sofa. Fans of ‘Babe, the Brave Little Piggy’ may dare to sit on this sofa, but we doubt they would put it in their living room.

3. The “hippy chic” armchair that doesn’t quite fit. The armrests of this armchair, designed by Hannes Grebin, appear to have been thrown by a marksman with poor marksmanship. For its absurd design it was nominated for an Oops in 2009.

4. The table that pees, a design by Judson Beaumont of Straight Line Designs, is one of the 10 ugliest designs of the year-and boy, are they ugly-at Marcel Benedito’s La Ventana. It’s still cute, and even funny, but with a table like this at home one can only pray that the pets don’t follow suit.

5. This chair, a concrete mixer, if you will, was among the nominees in the 2008 Oops Awards for its ugly aesthetics. Its design, the work of Nacho Carbonell, may give you an idea of why…

6. Color-blind furniture. The cabinet with showcases in this room has no relation to the design. Perhaps surrealism reserves some page to qualify it. Of course this piece would have been banned from participating in the Oops when they were forced to include a professional category among the horrible furniture.

7. The mirror chair, consisting of two plastic chairs joined by the armrest and designed by Kai Linke, takes the cake in terms of functional design. How do you feel? For its ridiculous design it was nominated for the Oops in 2009.

WTF Toilet with face, teeth and tongue? Although toilets do not fall into the furniture category per se, we have not been able to remove such a scatological occurrence from the list.

9. Toilet chair. Unlike some of the previous designs, this one is too practical, although its functions may be at odds. Everything will depend on your location.

10. Carpet chair. In favor of this chair made of pressed natural fibers, it must be said that it is environmentally friendly. As for its aesthetics, we leave its judgment to you.

Bonus Track. In theory it is a hardened recycled rope chair, but it makes you want to alert Agents Mulder and Scully from The X-Files because it looks more like a product from another planet.