Stagger: An Acoustic Wall Made from Repurposed Haworth Chairs

Zackery Belanger of Umbel Acoustic Design created Stagger, an acoustic installation using stackable Haworth chairs from the mid-1990s. The chairs are mounted on a birch plywood wall finished with tung oil, supported by off-the-shelf red hooks. Soft red tubing replaces the original clear chair feet to emphasize the interlocking layout. The arrangement recalls the wedges of anechoic chambers and provides both sound diffusion and mild broadband absorption. Umbel tested the chairs at Riverbank Acoustical Laboratories under its Novelty testing program. The studio explores acoustic properties of non-traditional materials like concrete, metal, glass, and plants, aiming to show that every object in a room affects sound. The chairs can be removed and used for seating during acoustic training events.