george n baïda

Crossing (2023) - Civic obedience systems have shaped the way we act - where to walk, when to stop, where to sit - resulting in sanitized, over-designed, and inorganic environments, leaving little room for self-directed usage of shared (modern) space. While looking at the difference between Eindhoven and Beirut in terms of the gesture of blocking a road, Crossing can be seen as an autonomous act, both in its design process and its function. The portable stool is made out of scrap wood and discarded materials found in the bin of @designacademyeindhoven ‘s workshop, without a design in mind, but rather to see how the found materials themselves shape the final outcome - embodying Beirut as a design methodology. The idea of reusing two straps comes from the act of wearing your stool as a “backpack,” with the countercurrent intention of walking the streets and navigating public space with your own stool in an active way, rather than passive - to rest for a sandwich, catch something high, tie a shoe, or anything else. shot by Anwyn Howarth @bracket___studio ! [ come see it during France Design Week from the 25-30th of september 2025; in the group exhibition “presque demain” - curated by @intersect.paris & during @dutchdesignweek for the first edition of Kruisstraat Design District (KDD), at Kruisstraat 185, Eindhoven ]

Citizen Chairs of Beirut - Sequences of a fragmented city (2025) MA Contextual Design graduation project @designacademyeindhoven - How can the dynamics and social landscape of a city be seen and revealed through the chairs’ agency in the public space of Beirut? Whether used by shop owners to block public parking space for potential clients, to gather collectively after-hours in a corner of the city or as a companion standing alongside the food cart for resting moments in eternal hustling days, chairs are witnesses and actors of (turbulent) daily life. Although almost always appearing in the same shape - the iconic, ubiquitous plastic monobloc chairs - they in fact carry a different message and statement each time encountered. By transforming existing chairs and merging them with footage taken in Beirut, I explore the alter-egos of the chairs, revealing and interpreting their semiotics metaphorically. Depending on the different aspects in which the chair manifests itself throughout the cityscape, the installation brings visible what is embodied in the chair. Each of them can be seen as fragments of the city, weaved with the films that expose the chairs’ different expressions and showing Beirut’s tranquil turmoil within and around the chairs. Their display invites the viewer to understand the chairs as different entities but intertwined with each other. Citizen Chairs of Beirut illustrates the biography of the city and the different layers it carries. It demonstrates how mundane objects and seemingly simple gestures speak to larger infrastructures of governmental dereliction, broken systems, state apparatus, scarcity, precarity, sorrow, but most of all, resilience. Special thanks (among many others) to @noahsanan , @margaweimans , @gabriel.a.maher_studio , @hrsak_lada , @jorgemanesrubio , @amna_solati , Jan Konings, @gilestetteynartey , @silviamartes , @yp_yuanpu , @noamtoran , @afainadejong , @vagrantbaker , Ben Shai Van Der Wal, @contextualdesign.dae and Beirut. Photography by Nicole Marnati, Anwyn Howarth @bracket___studio . [ on show during @dutchdesignweek from the 18-26th of October 2025, part of DAE’s graduation show at Microstad, Eindhoven (NL) ]

Citizen Chairs of Beirut - Sequences of a fragmented city (2025) The way the films are projected on the chairs emphasizes each of the latter’s attributes. The warning chair blocks the film like a scarecrow, as if obstructing a city street. The collectivity chair projects onto the floor, offering a humble, shared way of watching, with the chair surrounding the footage. Whereas the precarity chair’s film appears only on a fragment of the former, less cinematic, more of a reality check, demanding the viewer’s closeness. The chair’s voids act as fragments. MA Contextual Design graduation project @designacademyeindhoven

Selected stills from the docu-film trilogy, part of Citizen Chairs of Beirut - Sequences of a fragmented city (2025) installation. partly @noahsanan <3 MA Contextual Design graduation project @designacademyeindhoven

stitching

2019

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