At Orgatec 2016, the Boring Collection was presented not as a conventional furniture setup, but as an artwork. This marked the first time the concept, originally developed as a staged photograph by Lernert & Sander, was realised as a full-scale physical installation.
The piece featured a vertical assemblage of Boring furniture components — chairs, cabinets, desks, and screens — stacked into a singular, structural form. The composition drew formal inspiration from Ettore Sottsass’s ‘Carlton’ cabinet (1981), a seminal work from the Memphis Group, known for its radical rethinking of form, colour, and utility.
Where Sottsass employed vivid surfaces and expressive asymmetry to provoke and disrupt the conventions of post-war design, the Boring Collection takes the opposite route: it disappears. Rendered in a monochromatic grey, the installation reduced presence to near-zero, using compliance as its conceptual stance. It followed all European standards for office furniture, but it also suggested that standardisation itself could be a medium.
While stylistically distant, the Boring Collection shares with Sottsass a resistance to the expected. His provocation was one of excess; ours is absence.
By presenting the Boring Collection as an artwork at Orgatec — the world’s leading trade fair for office furniture — it quietly questioned the norms of the industry. In a context filled with ergonomic performance and visual appeal, this was the first time a fully grey, regulation-compliant office collection was presented as conceptual design rather than just contract furniture.
According to Stylepark: “this is certainly a cost-cutting measure,” but also one that clearly embodied the ethos behind the collection: let the certified basics be basic, so there’s more space — and budget — for everything else that isn’t."
No spotlights, no rotating platforms, no interactive screens. Just a silent grey stack in the middle of the world’s loudest furniture fair.
