From Georgia and Beyond: Exploring Cross Cultural Chairs with Matteo Guarnaccia

© Sharaf Naghiyeva

Interest in the rituals, hierarchies, and cultural codes embedded in everyday life led a Sicilian-born designer Matteo Guarnaccia to create Cross Cultural Chairs (CCC), a project that explores social and cultural differences by examining how people sit, gather, and interact with a shared object: the chair.

In 2018, in over eight months, Matteo traveled to eight of the world’s most populated countries, collaborating with local designers and artisans to translate each culture into a unique chair. The journey was as much about observation as it was about creation, absorbing local habits, navigating cultural nuances, and challenging assumptions about global design norms. Each chair became a lens to understand how we inhabit space and how those gestures are shaped by history, politics, and globalization.

Through CCC, Matteo shows that chairs are more than functional objects: they are political, social, and cultural mirrors. They carry subtle hierarchies, echo colonial legacies, and reflect the tension between local tradition and global homogenization. In this interview, Matteo shares his experiences from the inception of CCC, the challenges of collaborating across cultures, and his reflections on Georgia, where informal, improvised social spaces and rich craft traditions inspired a chair that is both functional and deeply expressive.

© Sharaf Naghiyeva

Tell us your story from the beginning. Where does your love for anthropology come from? Also, out of curiosity, are you anyhow related to the famous Italian artist and art critic Matteo Guarnaccia?

I’m Matteo Guarnaccia, a Sicilian-born designer based in Europe. My love for anthropology, though I didn’t call it that at the time, came long before design. I’ve always been more interested in why people do things rather than what they do. When I started studying design, I realized that objects are basically silent storytellers; they carry rituals, hierarchies, and cultural memory. That discovery pushed me toward a more research-driven practice. And no, unfortunately I’m not related to the late Italian artist and critic Matteo Guarnaccia. We just happen to share a name, though I really like his work.

How did the initial idea for Cross Cultural Chairs emerge? Was the project born out of curiosity, critique, or perhaps a reaction to globalized design homogenization?

The idea came from a simple observation: we all sit, but we don’t all sit the same way. How does the context influence the object and the way we use it or make it? I wanted to use a single object to understand how globalization affects habits, gestures, and even identities. Chairs were the perfect lens because they’re simultaneously mundane and symbolic, yet very Western.

Did your own Sicilian cultural background shape the way you approached this global research?

Definitely. Growing up in Sicily means growing up in a place where cultures have collided and blended for centuries. You learn that no culture is “pure,” and that everyday rituals are loaded with history. That made me sensitive to nuance, and respectful of cultural complexity. It also made me value storytelling, which has become central to my practice, and I have fun doing it.

You travelled to eight most populated countries within eight months for this project. Logistically and emotionally, what did those travels teach you?

It taught me to let go of assumptions. Logistically it was a marathon: new collaborators, new materials, new habits every four weeks. Emotionally it was humbling. You learn that what seems “normal” to you might not exist elsewhere, and that’s exactly the point. The project forced me to be porous: to absorb, to adapt, and sometimes even to unlearn. I started doing therapy after it and never stopped.

How did you approach each country differently? Or did you have a methodology you repeated everywhere?

I had to come up with my own methodology: observe, ask, collaborate, and prototype. However, every country required its own approach – one week for research, one for design, one for production and one for communication. It is not just about my method but also about the studio I am collaborating with. Instead of forcing a system, I let each place dictate the rhythm. My role was to listen, and then translate, trying to respect the timings since it was really limited.

© Matteo Guarnaccia

How did you choose the local studios and artisans to collaborate within each country?

I always looked for people who were not only skilled but also rooted in their culture, designers who naturally became cultural translators and were interested in this vision when designing. They were the anchors of each chapter. Without them, the project would have been superficial or would not have happened at all.

How did you navigate the line between “collaboration” and “appropriation” in cultures that were not your own?

By truly collaborating. I don’t arrive with a design or an idea and ask someone to execute it, we build the idea together. It becomes a balance between what I perceive of the local culture and what the other designers want to express about their context. We produce locally and make sure the final outcome reflects the place, not just our preconceptions. In doing so, I try to keep the project grounded in a respectful approach.

Was there a moment in which the local artisans pushed back on the design? What did you learn from that?

Many times, actually every time, and it was good. In my experience, I always received a no first. If you ask them to make something different from what they are used to, the first answer is no. With corrections, a couple of coffees and a bit of confidence, they start to soften up. Those corrections make the chairs theirs, not just mine.

© Matteo Guarnaccia

What did you discover about power dynamics encoded in chairs, who sits, how, where? Can a chair reflect class, gender, power, or colonial history?

Chairs are political. Height expresses hierarchy. Arrangement expresses gender roles. Material expresses access. In some places the chair is a marker of modernity; in others it’s a relic of colonial influence. Once you start reading chairs this way, you can’t unsee it.

In which country did sitting seem most “communal,” and where was it most “individualistic”?

Communal sitting appears where the ground or shared surfaces dominate. It naturally brings people together. Individualistic sitting emerges where single, elevated chairs are tied to status or personal comfort. The contrast is fascinating because it shapes social behavior. What would happen if we started sitting on the floor more in western cultures?

© Sharaf Naghiyeva

Is the modern chair a symbol of Western cultural export or even colonization?

In many ways, yes. This is one of the results I state in the CCC book. The standardized, ergonomic, mass-produced chair reflects Western ideals of posture, productivity and individual space. CCC questions whether these models fit everywhere, or whether they unintentionally erase local habits.

How is globalization changing the way people sit, gather, or occupy space?

Globalization introduces new objects, but not always new behaviors. People adapt global furniture to local rituals rather than the other way around. The result is hybridization, a mixture of imported forms and local habits.

What is the biggest myth about “cultural design differences” that the project destroyed for you?

I started the project by taking for granted that the chair is a universal object. Then I began to realize that it is also a physical representation of colonization. It’s very Western to assume that the entire globe uses chairs, and where they didn’t, “we” imposed them.

When you started researching Georgia, which cultural or historical threads immediately suggested the possibility of a “Georgian chair”?

Georgia’s layered history immediately stood out: Persian, Ottoman, Russian, Soviet influences, all visible at once. Then there’s the vernacular architecture: wooden balconies, carved pillars, metal railings, and a culture of semi-public living spaces. Those ingredients created a very clear aesthetic and social direction.

Did you notice any particular postures or ways of sitting that feel uniquely Georgian?

What struck me was the informal, improvised nature of Georgian social life. People gather on stoops, in courtyards, on balconies, often pulling up whatever is available, a stool, a crate, a stray chair. It’s flexible, lively, and deeply communal.

Georgian craft traditions include woodcarving, metalwork, vernacular carpentry, and textile culture. Which craft lineage felt most “symbiotic” with the idea of a Georgian chair?

Woodcarving and vernacular carpentry. Those balconies in Tbilisi are basically open-air sculptures. There’s a softness and warmth in Georgian woodwork that feels immediately “chair-like.” It’s easy to see this technique applied to furniture from the Svaneti culture.

What was your collaboration experience with Georgian designers and artisans? Did they challenge any of your preconceived notions about the project?

Extremely generous and direct. Georgian designers understand their heritage intuitively, and they challenged me to read the landscape more sensitively, to respect the informality, the improvisation, the elegance hidden in everyday life. My collaboration with Rooms Studio is finding balance between perspectives, feeding each other’s practices with what we contribute. I am really enjoying working with them.

Georgian ornament often blends pagan, Christian, and folkloric symbols. Did any of these enter the conceptual framework of the chair?

Yes, but in a subtle way. Georgian ornament mixes pagan, Christian, and folkloric elements, and we didn’t want to reproduce motifs literally. Instead, we echoed their spirit through structure, rhythm, and proportion, abstraction rather than illustration.

Lastly, why does asking philosophical questions about chairs actually matter?

Because chairs look simple, but they’re cultural mirrors. When you look into chairs, you look into how people live, relate, host, work, rest, dominate, submit, or gather. They expose invisible rules. Maybe asking philosophical questions about chairs is asking philosophical questions about humanity?!

Upcoming Event

Matteo will be presenting the project in collaboration with Rooms Studio on Monday, December 15th 2025, at 19:00, at E.A. Shared Space Gallery, P. Ingorokva Street 10/2, Tbilisi, Georgia.

We would like to thank Matteo Guarnaccia for sharing his insights and reflections on the Cross Cultural Chairs project, and for giving us a deeper understanding of the ways culture, history, and everyday life shape how people inhabit space.

Follow Cross Cultural Chairs project on Instagram: @crossculturalchairs

Check out more photographs taken by Matteo on Instagram: @emmegu

We would also like to thank Sharaf Naghiyeva for the photos. Check more of her work on Instagram: @sharaf.naghiyeva