What Does the Broken Chair in Geneva Represent?

Symbolism: why a chair with a broken leg?

The chair is a seat — a place where everyone, including political leaders, can sit. By breaking its fourth leg, the sculpture evokes the limb lost by a victim of an anti-personnel landmine or cluster munition: an empty seat that can never again be occupied.

The three remaining legs and the high backrest hold the chair upright. Sculptor Daniel Berset intended this to show that, despite its injury, the chair remains standing and keeps its dignity — just like the survivors and communities affected by armed violence.

The message to the United Nations

The monument deliberately faces the Palace of Nations, the European headquarters of the United Nations. It serves as a daily reminder to diplomats: honour the commitments made to ban anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions, assist the victims and clear contaminated land.

Handicap International has used the chair as a stage for successive campaigns — for the Ottawa Treaty (1997), the Oslo Convention on Cluster Munitions (2008), and since 2016 against the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Who created the Broken Chair?

The project was launched in 1997 by Handicap International (now Humanity & Inclusion), at the initiative of Paul Vermeulen, co-founder of Handicap International Switzerland. Swiss artist Daniel Berset designed the sculpture; carpenter Louis Genève built it and engineer Thomas Büchi oversaw its structure. It is made of 5.5 tonnes of Douglas fir wood and stands 12 metres tall.

Why was it planned for only three months?

The chair was installed on 18 August 1997 to push world governments to sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting the production, stockpiling, use and transfer of anti-personnel mines. The treaty was signed in December 1997, and the sculpture was originally meant to be dismantled at that point.

Its popularity was such that it stayed. When Place des Nations was renovated in 2005 the chair was removed, but a popular campaign led by Handicap International brought it back to its original location on 26 February 2007.

How the giant chair was built

The project moved with remarkable speed. Once the concept was agreed in 1997, carpenter Louis Genève and his team built the chair in about a month, and it was assembled on Place des Nations with a crane in time for its inauguration on 18 August 1997.

Structurally, the sculpture is a small feat of engineering: 5.5 tonnes of Douglas fir, designed by Thomas Büchi to face the weather of an open square, and detailed by Daniel Berset down to the rough-hewn texture of the wood and the jagged break of the fourth leg.

Why a chair? The universal object

The chair is arguably the most universal object of daily life — present in homes, schools, parliaments and palaces on every continent. By choosing a chair, Daniel Berset gave the monument a language that is understood everywhere, without a single written word.

A chair also implies a person: someone sits on it. With its fourth leg broken, the chair keeps the place of the one who can no longer sit — a permanent, silent invitation to remember the victims of landmines and cluster munitions.

A people's monument: the 2005–2007 rescue

The chair owes its permanence to the people of Geneva. When the redevelopment of Place des Nations in 2005 put its future in doubt, a spontaneous public movement — and a campaign led by Handicap International — turned the planned removal into a symbol of its own.

Months of debate and petitions followed. On 26 February 2007 the chair was reinstalled at its original location, where it has stood ever since: a monument that survives because people chose to keep it.