The only chair design that changed the world

From modern chairs to Chair Anatomy to 100 Midcentury Chairs, there are plenty of design books on chairs. Entire volumes have been written about most important chairs in design history, including Peter and Charlotte Fiell’s on 1,000 major chair designs. But in those accounts you are guaranteed not to see a chair so influential that it has literally changed the world around it. And yet, the modern folding wheelchair is such a chair. The familiar lightweight steel and chrome chair resting on four wheels is so integrated into civic life that we scarcely stop to consider it – nor its implications.