coffin-shaped office chair design wants workers to sit there, forever

The Last Shift Office Chair by Chairbox with Designboom

Imagine stepping inside the office and looking for one’s usual office chair, only to discover it has been replaced by a wooden coffin. The chair design’s exterior takes its design cues from coffins, following the shapes and lines of a typical casket, while the interior seems to be made of wood. No cushioned seating area can be seen, so the chair might just be crammed with wood even for the lumbar support. Sitting in this chair while working in the office for a 9-to-5 job seems like a dream one cannot wait to escape from.

The mastermind behind the coffin-inspired chair is Chairbox, a UK-based designer, and the true name of the design is ‘The Last Shift Office Chair.’ The designer tells designboom that the inspiration behind the coffin office chair came to him when he was in his friend’s living room lying on the floor with his legs on the couch. ‘I thought that if I die in this pose, they might have to bury me like that. It would be so inconvenient to put me in a coffin. They probably would need a special coffin in this case. I told my friend about it, and we laughed, but after a couple of weeks, I returned to that idea and explored it a bit more. Later, I made a 3D model in CAD software, rendered it, and posted online,’ Chairbox tells designboom.

images courtesy of Chairbox

Inspired by Rene Magritte’s The Balcony (1950)

One Reddit user states that they believe that the coffin office chair is a reference to Rene Magritte’s painting titled The Balcony (1950) where the artist painted four coffins on a balcony, and one of them was a coffin chair. Chairbox tells designboom that he had not seen the painting before he created his design and that the his design ‘was just a pure reflection of my state.’

Chairbox also shares with designboom that his first idea was fueled by a recent study on how sitting for six to eight hours per day may cause mortality. ‘By design, humans were not created to sit on chairs for eight hours a day,’ Chairbox shares. He also points out the growing overworking culture that seems to permeate workplaces around the world, and the designer finds it as gaslighting employees into thinking ‘this is the life as it is supposed to be.’

The Balcony (1950), Rene Magritte | image courtesy of Rene Magritte

Chairbox is the artist behind the coffin office chair

Different internet users quoted different people and news agencies in the hope of finding the person behind the images, and the artist himself reached out to designboom to share more about his design influences and process for ‘The Last Shift Office Chair.’ He writes to designboom that he first posted ‘The Last Shift Office Chair’ on October 25th, 2021 on his Instagram, and has noticed that lately, his design has piqued the interest of the web world.

One Reddit user wrote: ‘Finally! An office chair that reflects what it actually feels like to sit in on yet another pointless two-hour meeting that could have been a simple email!’ Other users agree that the coffin office chair reflects the overworking culture and dead-end jobs employees experience.

with charcoal wood for the seating area