19/08/2026
Why does a Bauhaus bench from 1923 still feel radical today? And what does it have to do with a chair made from recycled plastic toys in Antwerp?
When invited Joris and Vanessa, ecoBirdy's co-founders and designers, to lead a guided tour through Designing Childhood, they didn't choose the most famous pieces. They chose the ones that told a story they recognised. Six objects, spread across a century of design thinking, each one a different answer to the same question: what does it mean to design for a child?
Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, handed the children's room at the Bauhaus because furniture design belonged to men, and who turned that constraint into a discipline that barely existed before. Lucien Engels, who built an entire world for children on the Belgian coast, a place Joris visited as a boy and fell in love with. Richard Sapper and Marco Zanuso, who made the first chair ever from plastic and made it for children. Bruno Munari, who gave a child a universe to inhabit entirely on their own terms.
And the Charlie Chair. Named after ecoBirdy's godchild. Made from the toys children grow out of. Standing in a museum alongside a hundred years of history it didn't know it was part of.
The full story is on ecoBirdy's website. Every object, every reason, every personal thread that connects them. Link in bio.