A more unique use case, but these remind me of water polo practice. We'd have to carry them across the pool without getting them wet. Sometimes we'd do 3 person drills where 1 person would carry it across and hand it to the next person who would carry it across to the 3rd person who would carry it back to the first person, etc. The chair was well suited because you could hold it by any two legs easily enough, so when handing it off you didn't have to re-adjust. It was a brutal drill, especially since your "rest" was treading water.
OT but I never understood why treading water in calm comfortable temperature (20C plus) pool is supposed to be difficult (or even slightly tiring). For me it is definitely less effort than e.g. standing up.
Haha I had to lookup what eggbeater means and based on some YouTube videos it's crazy how much some people have to move to stay afloat. The body densities must vary a lot more than I thought.
Some people have a high enough body fat proportion to be naturally buoyant, so they can float on their backs without doing anything. Most men don’t have enough body fat and have to actively move in order to stay afloat. Treading water for just a few minutes is part of many military fitness tests - for many fit people it’s quite a lot of work.
You take a deep breath and hold it. Breath out very quickly then immediately back in, all the way. Hold it. Repeat. You don't even need to lie back, you just allow yourself to settle a little deeper.
When I graduated basic training I was fairly lean. I was 5'10" and weighed 148lbs and got fairly good fitness scores relative to the rest of my flight, so I had to have been reasonable well muscled. (Not anymore though. Oh no.) I could still "tread water" just by holding my breath.
It's more of a skill (that they don't teach you, for some reason) than a test of physical fitness.
I imagine this doesn't work for water polo players who are actively doing stuff in the water. I imagine you need to keep breathing fairly heavily just to keep up with the activity. But then again I've never played water polo so I wouldn't know.
One of the 3D metal printing companies made a titanium version of this chair and had it out at Westec or one of the tradeshows. It gave me really mixed emotions, do I want it because its frickin' titanium or am I just impressed you can print something like that? I expect that chair to outlive the company and possibly humans on the planet :-)
It wasn't a link, it was a prop at a trade show to get you to talk to the folks about their 3D printer that could print metal, that said I would have expected them to create some sort of version of it that was accessible to the web. I've sent off an question to my machinist buddy who was there as well to see if he remembers which company did it.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? I'm afraid you've been doing it a lot, and we ban accounts that post that way. We're trying, if possible, for something a bit better than internet median here.
Well, they may recognize the shape of the chair as being similar to the stations at the end of the ancient transport system the precursors created. But since that system of tubes was too small for humans to travel through, it must have been something from an even older culture that humans co-opted and used in their ritualistic worship of the rectangle deity.
Because it implies an end to humanity on this planet that does not also incorporate an end to that titanium chair. That any physical object could outlive humanity means that humanity will end far before it should.
Is this U.S. specific? I've never come across it (though it seems like something I might have seen in a café in north america). The monobloc I've seen in every continent except Antartica - as I've not been, but I'm sure there is someone here who could attest that they've sat on one there.
in my recollection, the old/original ones were around alot kind of everywhere (watch 60s movies with office/interior scenes, etc, though i'm younger than that), gradually fading away, and then the new ones came back on the scene ~10y ago (and yes, now very often at hipster sorts of places)
These types of chairs are basically everywhere in Austin, TX. I actually sat on one earlier today at a cafe. (Probably was a knockoff as it had 4 vertical struts.)
The OG ugly design has seemingly insurmountable cultural inertia. Many handsome modern monobloc designs out there, production cost not that much greater, but I very rarely see them being sold or being used out in the wild. Wonder if there's a "stack" of theseus thing going on, since the modern designs are largely not stack compatible with the original geometry. Really annoying/perplexing this form factor has lasted so long.
I couldn't disagree more. That's my favourite thing about these chairs - they're cheap and ugly, but i actually find them really nice to sit in. There's just the right amount of flex to support you and bend to the shape of your body without feeling flimsy. Most cheap chairs are either totally inflexible, or too flimsy.
I always hesitate to sit in them because I always get the impression that they’re dirty. I think that’s a problem with them being white: every speck of dirt stands out.
They also get really hot and bendy if you leave them in the sun. I recall have the legs of one collapse under me in Brazil because of this (I'm not a particular large person!).
Look more closely; we've had these for years. These bloody things are now sold in nearly all party shops, variety stores, and supermarkets in the Netherlands, because US media (like films and music videos) and social media from America feature these as the cups you use for a party.
Your local Jumbo sells them. Your local Action probably too. They seem to be bought by teenagers mainly.
For the non-Dutch: the stereotypical plastic cup in the Netherlands is white and much smaller than these solo-cups. The trend is towards more environmentally friendly paper cups though.
These are basically disposable chairs that break easily and sit in landfills forever. I'm shocked that over a billion have been sold in Europe alone. They are aesthetically offensive in my opinion.
That break easily? These things are nigh indestructible in my experience. It’s possible that you had ones that weren’t rated for the appropriate weight, they have slightly different sizes and larger ones are beefier.
It isn’t even the plastic I have a problem with: this particular design had always been incredibly unstable especially if sitting down the slope backwards: the back legs would bend and you would fall over.
> These things are nigh indestructible in my experience.
Not in my experience. When new the plastic has enough flex to tolerate some abuse, but that doesn't last very long - especially if exposed to UV. Polypropylene does not like being exposed to direct sunlight.
Most used examples I've encountered are brittle and break easily if not already cracked. They're disposable plastic garbage.
Fortunately, there is a new recycling process [1] that takes 1/7th the energy footprint of creating virgin polypropylene. I hate these for the disposability too, but if we can direct them away from water bodies and landfills into recycled polypropylene, then that’s a modest improvement.
You're right, they break down and get brittle quite rapidly in sunlight. Here in the Philippines they don't last long outdoors. They have a much longer life as indoor mass seating.
A lot of them are used outdoors in harsh climates where they’re exposed to the elements, making the plastic brittle. Used as intended, they should be indestructible.
I don't think standing on them is what they're designed for, that strains even the best built chairs. The interesting thing about this chair I think is its relative strength compared to the absolute dearth of materials used, not its absolute strength, in my opinion — it won't ever be a strong as a steel chair, sure, but that is not why these things are remarkable.
> I don't think standing on them is what they're designed for, that strains even the best built chairs.
My memories of monoblocs suggest that the problem is less that the chair can't take the strain of being stood on, and more that it can't take the strain of being climbed onto. They're not rigid bodies; getting on to one to stand up will shake the seat around like crazy.
From my experience, they can be stronger than a steel chair. The cheap ones at least.
I had many steel chairs break at the welds. Or have the legs bent. For example, if you balance on the back legs, both the steel and plastic chair may collapse, but the plastic chair will keep its shape afterwards, while the steel chair may stay bent or break.
Chairs are designed for someone to sit on, not stand on. When the first chair broke due to the extreme concentration of weight in one spot, that should have been a sign not to abuse the second chair in the same way.
Its a question of tolerances, if they break when someone stands on them they there is a decent chance they will break when you sit on them, or sit down too fast, or sit on them on uneven ground that distributes slightly too much weight to one leg, or they have been in the sun too long and have become brittle.
I'm a relatively tall guy and am wary sitting on these, standing on them would be certain failure. They are essentially cheap trash that will spend ~12 months looking like a chair and 500 years looking like a broken chair in a landfill.
If the legs broke it probably wasn't weight concentration but just embrittlement due to UV and weather exposure. In my experience that's how most of these chair break, at the legs not in the seat.
Monobloc chairs are ubiquitous here in the Philippines. You see them everywhere. Of course, this country embodies all the qualities that fuel the growth of these chairs: poverty, a massive population that is multiplying rapidly, lack of environmental awareness, and an absence of aesthetic sensibility and urban planning.
When you see something like this, feel free to jump in and fix it.
I went ahead and edited the page for you, linking the second instance of "monobloc" to the disambiguation page for that word. It seemed like a tossup between linking the word there vs. the highlighted word in the first sentence, so if you think something else would be more helpful in the article, please go for it. Thanks!
Another big factor is how they're stored. If left outside in the sun they'll become pretty brittle. Most people probably experience poorly stored and older examples of these chairs just by sheer probability.
Also gets a lot more difficult when you can only eggbeater with your legs and have to hold a chair above your head!!
Most people can float on their back without much effort.
When I graduated basic training I was fairly lean. I was 5'10" and weighed 148lbs and got fairly good fitness scores relative to the rest of my flight, so I had to have been reasonable well muscled. (Not anymore though. Oh no.) I could still "tread water" just by holding my breath.
It's more of a skill (that they don't teach you, for some reason) than a test of physical fitness.
I imagine this doesn't work for water polo players who are actively doing stuff in the water. I imagine you need to keep breathing fairly heavily just to keep up with the activity. But then again I've never played water polo so I wouldn't know.
The perceived temperature is that less conductive objects are less hot/cool than more conductive ones.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2UvVoTS460
Two examples:
https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/12/412300/6034129/stac...
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/27/cb/7c/27cb7c5a2e9610cff78e47ce5...
Hopefully someone has (or can take) a freely licensed image to add to the article.
A German moniker for the chair is 'Rasen Akne', which translates to 'lawn acne'.
As you can probably surmise that's not meant as a compliment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeco_1006
As a lifelong US resident I've seen those no more than a handful of times, always at hipster bars or restaurants.
how old are you?
in my recollection, the old/original ones were around alot kind of everywhere (watch 60s movies with office/interior scenes, etc, though i'm younger than that), gradually fading away, and then the new ones came back on the scene ~10y ago (and yes, now very often at hipster sorts of places)
Anything produced in million-up quantities can be said to be successful, but some are more successful than others!
Well nevermind.
That's the Apple between the chairs
"Hey, pull up a monobloc and tell me all about it!"
Well you know it's 1970s or later.
I agree though: very comfortable to sit in.
We often forget that these products have been designed by someone, somewhere, who thought long and hard about their aesthetics, usability and cost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
Your local Jumbo sells them. Your local Action probably too. They seem to be bought by teenagers mainly.
For the non-Dutch: the stereotypical plastic cup in the Netherlands is white and much smaller than these solo-cups. The trend is towards more environmentally friendly paper cups though.
Once you notice them, you'll see them everywhere.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCAajKTeS-mCS3PccJUrrIzw
Not in my experience. When new the plastic has enough flex to tolerate some abuse, but that doesn't last very long - especially if exposed to UV. Polypropylene does not like being exposed to direct sunlight.
Most used examples I've encountered are brittle and break easily if not already cracked. They're disposable plastic garbage.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-25/polypropy...
the worst part is when they wait for you to sit on them before doing so.
i've noticed the darker colors tend to last longer, I don't know why.
My memories of monoblocs suggest that the problem is less that the chair can't take the strain of being stood on, and more that it can't take the strain of being climbed onto. They're not rigid bodies; getting on to one to stand up will shake the seat around like crazy.
Most chairs are much more physically stable.
I had many steel chairs break at the welds. Or have the legs bent. For example, if you balance on the back legs, both the steel and plastic chair may collapse, but the plastic chair will keep its shape afterwards, while the steel chair may stay bent or break.
I'm a relatively tall guy and am wary sitting on these, standing on them would be certain failure. They are essentially cheap trash that will spend ~12 months looking like a chair and 500 years looking like a broken chair in a landfill.
I don't think I would risk standing on one, though.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B005PJ0VJQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt...
Definitely made of plastic.
This is a serious conflict with the other complaint that they spontaneously disintegrate under exposure to sunlight.
If you bought it in 2020 it’s probably not.
If you bought it before 1990 it probably is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panton_Chair
"The Monobloc chair is a lightweight stackable polypropylene chair, usually white in colour, often described as the world's most common plastic chair"
Monobloc, adjective made as, contained in, or involving a single casting.
When you see something like this, feel free to jump in and fix it.
I went ahead and edited the page for you, linking the second instance of "monobloc" to the disambiguation page for that word. It seemed like a tossup between linking the word there vs. the highlighted word in the first sentence, so if you think something else would be more helpful in the article, please go for it. Thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTYWPuJ_zJc
For something a step up from the monobloc, a typica classroom chair will last and take some abuse, though not as common especially in low quantities.