UNITY seating for MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) selected American designer Richard Shemtov to design their new public seating for the entire ground floor of the museum lobby.

Shemtov was commissioned directly by MoMA for the difficult task of designing custom site specific seating to accommodate the museum’s 10,000+ daily visitors. As the acting CEO and founder of Dune, a leading contemporary furniture company, he was also entrusted with the prototype development and execution of the final collection which has been installed in the museum.

His groundbreaking new design, titled “UNITY”, is a sculptural form that is modular, non-directional and when multiplied creates endless configurations. ”For this project, the last thing I wanted to do was to create a distracting design that would compete with the artwork for attention.” says Shemtov. The scale and proportions were also a huge consideration due to the vast open spaces, soaring ceiling heights and columns that the design had to integrate with. “There was no other designer who better understood the purpose and vision of this project as well as the interior design aesthetic we envisioned,” says MoMA’s communications department.

“Most museum seating is linear or forward facing, usually towards the walls where the artwork is hung; however, with the wavy form of the UNITY design you can choose where you want to sit and view the art from different vantage points. Guests could also lounge with a large group of friends or sit alone and meet someone new. A key component was to foster social interaction among the museum’s visitors” says Shemtov.
The UNITY seating series was locally fabricated by Dune at their Jersey City, NJ factory.