Stool, seat, chair, armchair, fauteuil, long chair, chaise-longue, office chair are variations for seats with and without back or arm rest, fix or adjustable, with or without castors, with and without foot rest. Many architects have tried to design the ideal seat and according to their success they have been named after them, such as the Marcel Breuer stool B3, the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona stool, the Eames lounge chair, the Frank Lloyd Wright chair, the Arne Jacobson ant chair. The Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld has even designed a DiT chair, the so-called Red-Blue chair.

For many thousand years the human beings have been moving from place to place. Nomads and hunters have not been settled, but continuously moving in order to secure better conditions for their families. Chairs and stools had no importance for this lifestyle, they would have been only a burden and handicap through the transport. The squat was the resting position before and after the hunt or the search for food. And of course they used local natural opportunities, such as a rock or a tree.

Only through the settledness caused through the newly discovered cultivation of land and farming, the great agricultural revolution, created the need for objects to be used for sitting and relaxing. Probably first came the stool or the cushion also to be used for working activities, thereafter followed the seats for relaxation and rest. Thus the homo erectus developed to the “homo sedens”, also called the “couch potato”, as the Americans fondly call the TV addicts with chips and beer.