The Atlas Obscured Collection was conceived to define a place in time and articulate its evolution over centuries in a way inspired by the vibrant energy and intricacies of cityscapes. It took root in 2016, when Ted Galante was commissioned to design outdoor seating for Harvard Square. Realizing that Harvard University is 150 years older than the United States, he felt the gravity of his mission to infuse the seating with evocative historical narrative. Soon after, while visiting the Tuileries Garden in Paris, Ted was sketching concepts for the university seating when he realized the insignificance of the design and craftsmanship of the chair beneath him; identifiable only by a number like its neighboring chairs, it was too generic to be properly tied to “place” in its location. Noticing a disconnect between this meaningless, humdrum furniture and its richly storied context, he wondered: If a piece of architecture can be about placemaking, then why couldn’t a piece of furniture also be? Recalling Le Corbusier’s famous dictum, “Furniture is just architecture in miniature,” Ted was driven to create a seating arrangement that would not simply exist in the space for people to use but would also define the identity of a city that was dear to the users. With that he set out to manifest a contextualized seating arrangement that would captivate all in a historical and geographical realm. As a veteran architect, he knew that, once built, a building becomes part of the fabric it sits within, whether influenced by it or not; so, he reasoned, should a piece of furniture. The Atlas Obscured Collection was born to do just that, by the way it translates the history of various urban street grids through meticulously crafted chairs. With the mediums of laser-cut wood and colorfully powder-coated aluminum a place’s entire existence announces itself through a series of overlaid historical maps on the seats, backs, and sometimes legs and frames. For example, on the Harvard Square chair the base layer is from 1636, the second from 1776, the third from 1945, and the top layer from the present day; likewise for the chair-maps of Boston, New York City, Paris, Singapore, or any city. With the Atlas Obscured Collection, one is sitting upon hundreds – in some cases thousands – of years of history, thereby occupying that particular place in the context of its geographic progression: what were once traditional cow paths to bring animals to market now support the modern city’s major arteries, cross streets, side streets, back alleys, city squares and parks. Through the lattice of maps, a city’s story is sculpted before our eyes, making it one with its context, and hopefully resonates a sense of place with the sitter.