The Pinakothek der Moderne will have
pieces of seating furniture available for visitors
for a whole year.
Visitors can sit on this furniture and talk to each other.
It is all about conversations between visitors.
And it is also about the experiences visitors have
with this seating furniture.

Social seating comes from an idea that allows people to come together.
With the help of new media,
people can choose who they want to sit next to.
This way they can choose who they want to talk to.
The offer is always voluntary.
Sometimes Social Seating is available
on aeroplanes or at events, for example.
 
But in the Rotunda of the Pinakothek der Moderne,
visitors meet by chance.
They can talk to each other on the seating furniture
if they want to.
This is why Die Neue Sammlung shows
15 pieces of seating furniture.
They were made by designers from many different countries.
The oldest pieces of seating furniture are around 70 years old.
But there is also very modern seating furniture from today.

The exhibition asks these questions:
• How has sitting together changed over time?
• How does sitting together affect people’s lives together?
• What different ideas have designers tried out?
• How has the look of seating furniture changed?
• What materials were used to make seating furniture?
• Will it be even more important in the future
for seating furniture to last a long time?
Also, is it more important
that the material can be easily reused?
This is known as sustainability.

The Internet has changed the world:
There is less real contact between people now.
The Social Seating exhibition wants to
encourage contact and real conversations
between people.

11
Seat Lounger
Year: 2006
Design: Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen
Production: Molo Design in the city of Vancouver in Canada
Material: paper

This round seat is called Lounger.
You can easily recycle it because it is made of paper.
But it should also last a long time.
This is possible because the seat
is very stable on the inside.
It looks like a honeycomb.
A honeycomb is a shape with 6 corners.

You can connect the seat’s ends. 

This creates a round seat.
To do this, you pull the seat apart and
bring the ends together.
At the ends, there are magnetic panels.
Magnetic means: the panels are made of metal and 
they attract each other.
You can also connect several seats to create one long seat.

Over time, the paper’s surface intentionally
starts to look wrinkled and lively.
It depends on how you use the seat.

The paper is made from a special kind of wood.
It comes from forests where people cut down only a few trees.
The surface is covered with a product
that is non-toxic and that protects against fire.

16
Sofa Island Tom Pouf
Year: 2013
Design: Alexander Seyfried
Production: Richard Lampert GmbH+C in the city of Stuttgart
in Germany
On loan from: Richard Lampert
Material: foam and wood

Pouf is pronounced like this: poof.
This is French and means seating cushion.

This sofa is typical of a furniture series called Tom.
This series has round cushions.
The cushions are stacked on top of each other.
In the middle, there is a pole.
You can lean against this pole.

The cushions can come in different colours and
there can be different numbers of cushions.
They can be made of different materials.

The sofas have several different uses:
they can be small, like a bar stool or a seating cushion.
Or they can be large sofas for offices, hotels or museums.