Broken Chair
Monumental wooden chair sculpture with a shattered leg, protesting landmines and cluster munitions.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Broken Chair in Geneva starts with a simple count: three whole legs and one shattered into a jagged stump, standing right across the square from the Palace of Nations. It traces back to 1996, when Belgian aid worker Paul Vermeulen wanted diplomats to notice what landmines were doing to ordinary people, and the artist and craftsmen he brought in to build something twelve metres tall out of Douglas fir. You'll hear about the treaty banning landmines the chair was originally built to mark, and the engineering that keeps a wooden sculpture that tall standing steady in Geneva's wind. Look up at that missing leg, still gone on purpose.
This audio guide was created using AI.