As part of this year’s London Design Festival, Japanese designer and architect Daisuke Motogi partnered with Vitra on an exhibition titled Hackability of the Stool, which showcases 100 ideas for altering Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60. Motogi is known for exploring the relationship between objects and users, and creating functional and playful designs that incorporate surprise and whimsy. So you know this project was collaboration was right up his alley.
“Developing numerous ideas on how to modify the humble design icon, Motogi first presented the results in 2020 as an online exhibition on his Instagram account, where it caught Artek’s attention. Originally over 400 ideas were boiled down to 100 modifications, which Motogi and his team developed by manually altering, or hacking, the Stool 60. In the beginning, they focused on functionality and form, adding the functions of household items onto the stool, or transforming existing tools into stools. Later ideas were centered around the user, transforming Stool 60 into sports equipment or pet homes.”
He’s obviously created dozens of very smart ideas though I want to focus in one concept: this brilliant record player sound system. When I saw this I was in awe—how has no one thought of something like this? It’s portable, it’s out of the way, it’s charming as hell. I feel like design nerds would totally buy this for real, it’s so ingenious.
