During the spring semester of 2022, Jeremy Bilotti, Lecturer in Design at MIT, taught an advanced product design course entitled “The next 150-year chair”, envisioning the future of sustainable furniture, new technology for manufacturing and the role of future product designers. In November, the student projects will be showcased at Emeco House in Venice, CA and online at www.emeco.net. “Today, a 150-year chair means making something that lasts a long time, which is a great thing to do. But the question is whether that will be the same for the next 150 years. Should the goal still be to make things that last forever? That's one approach, but maybe there's something that could be infinitely recyclable instead, or something that's modular and reconfigurable. There are a million different perspectives on this idea within design, which became an interesting starting point for a thought experiment: what is the next 150 year chair?” -Skylar Tibbits Through the studio, students created material innovations in recycled plastics, envisioned the future of furniture for living in dense cities, demonstrated new technology for liquid metal 3d printing, invented soft seating systems that can be infinitely re-configured, and proposed entirely new ways to increase the longevity of furniture across multiple generations of users. Jeremy Bilotti — Course Instructor — Lecturer in Design, MIT — @jeremybilotti Skylar Tibbits — Director of Undergraduate Design, Department of Architecture — Associate Professor of Design Reserach, MIT — @skylartibbits Jaye Buchbinder — Head of Sustainability at Emeco — @emecochairs Gregg Buchbinder — Owner at Emeco — @emecochairs Lavender Tessmer — Course TA — PhD Candidate, Department of Architecture, MIT — @lavendertessmer María Risueño Dominguez — Graduate Student, MIT — @risudom Zain Karsan — Graduate Student, MIT — @zkarsan Amelia Lee — Undergraduate Student, MIT & Wellesley College — @_amelia.lucia_ Faith Jones — Undergraduate Student, MIT Jo Pierre — Undergraduate Student, MIT The course projects were made possible by a gift from Emeco.