According to sources, this is supposedly because this was made to be presented as a "concept" first and foremost at an art contest of sorts (the one she got an award from), making it quite literally a form over function type of deal. That does not really excuse much, however, since all it does is leave the open-ended question of how the fuck would anyone ACTUALLY turn this artistic concept onto anything functional, specially on the context of public transportation where manspreading is mentioned the most, where a literal chair not attached to the floor would not exactly help with anything in any sense.

Yeah, for real, these chairs aren't even good at their primary purpose.