Edited by: Enrico Mancini enrico.mancini@positive-magazine.com
Where: Germany
Design: Joscha Weiand
Proofreading: Bianca Baroni
One of the worst things about toys is that sooner or later you’ll get bored of them.
That’s why the Danish Lego has become so popular: you’ll never get bored of it. Simply because the concept of a toy is reduced to a easy, but magic, little brick that you can put together to build up whatever your imagination wants.
The German designer Josha Weiand probably applied the same line of reasoning to home furniture. Frequently, sure enough, high-eng design pieces are nothing more than wildly expensive toys for grown-up.
His thesis at the Design Academy of Eindhowen, called Loose Joints, consisted in seven types of white plastic joints and different lengths wooden poles. Combining joints and sticks you can build chairs, tables, shelves, and much more.
When your wife gets bored of the post-industrial desk you proudly assembled during the whole Sunday, she can dismantle it and put together, for example, a Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair.
The step forward that Josha made with Loose Joints project is that not only you can use a modular construction method that allows you to build basically everything, but it can absorb what you already own. He made a funny-fan, a make-up console, a super-complicated hanging lamp and some more examples.
He is convinced that these days many products are mass produced to keep up with demand and lower cost. This means that many of us have exactly the same products in our homes. Loose Joints is a modular system that can be mass produced but can also be used to create unique products.
As simple as this.
