The Monobloc is the best-selling piece of furniture of all time. It is estimated that there are one billion copies of this cheap, often white plastic chair – all over the world, in every country and every corner. How did it get this far? Grimme Prize winner Hauke Wendler spent eight years working on a documentary that gets to the bottom of this question. This photobook, which brings together film sequences as well as archival footage from Monobloc enthusiasts around the world, tells the story of how this unremarkable chair, despised by many, conquered the world. How it destroyed livelihoods and brought wealth. How it threatens our environment and good taste. But also how the Monobloc is indispensable to millions of people for whom a chair is a chair and nothing more. MONOBLOC is a globalization-critical story between functionality and beauty, capitalism and participation, consumption and recycling.

This book is also available in English.

HAUKE WENDLER (*1967) is a film director, writer, and producer. After studying political science and history, he began working as a freelance journalist and reporter for various television stations before focusing on his work as a filmmaker.