As part of the D3 competition exhibition during the last edition of imm Cologne 2013, young designer Julian Sterz presented Place Keeper, a conceptual exercise which takes up one conventional chair to create multiple, "place keeper" seats, seeking to explore the relationship between an object and the meaning attached to it.

The project, which has been developed by Sterz for his graduation, started with the idea to split already existing design objects — alongside their adherent symbolic and material value — and to distribute the resulting components to "placeholder-objects" who act as recipients. Sterz chose an everyday item — the chair — to work on, and has so far produced two lines of chairs with four and six multiples, or "place keepers".

The early results, which Sterz has admitted below to the realm of the art installation, include the 1/4-Line — a combination of a kitchen chair and welded steel wire for the placeholder — and the 1/6-Row — a composite made of 5/6 cast acrylic and 1/6 part of a wooden chair, which previously served as a model for the casting mould. According to Sterz, the place keeper chairs "should preferably be of low grade of formal and material value," varying between "a cast reproduction of the original, steelwire construction, cardboard packing", among others.