Utensil Collection

International designers create an exclusive Utensil Collection for the Passagen 2012. Located in Cologne Ehrenfeld, Utensil represents a design philosophy that will be a central aspect of the project: Objects originally designed for industrial use, trade or public space are sold (as functional design objects) to be used in private life. Products of convincing materiality and functionality will be modified to be used in everyday life. The output of the project has been presented at an exhibition during Passagen 2012/Furniture Fair Cologne. Afterwards, the designs will go into production and be brought to market as Utensil Collection.

Since 2009, Utensil owner Anna Lederer has been presenting her everyday items in her shop in Cologne Ehrenfeld. As curator of her assortment, she keeps discovering new convincing products and puts them into a new context. Originally designed and developed to be used in trade, industry or public space, they're turned into useful objects of daily life. In Anna's salesroom, an Erlenmeyer flask is changed into a decanter just like a leisure locker key wrist band turns out to be a piece of fashion jewelry. The products are transferred from their professional environment to the customers' private home.

On the occasion of Passagen 2012, Utensil will break the mould by introducing their own collection in cooperation with international designers. According to Anna Lederer's philosophy, they will be on the scout for existing products within the working world, public space or the industrial environment. Those products, factory or no-name-designed, impress with individuality, distinctive design, materiality as well as functionality. By minor modifications or playing with the specific material, the designers will customise those objects for home use. Adapting specific materials and typical manufacturing processes to new products can be one way, modification of design functionality another.

The design office Halfmann/Mennickheim has decided in favour of a classic piece of furniture found in almost every educational institution in Germany: a wooden chair with vats. Based on the classical construction and materiality, the designers will develop a bar chair. Thus, the stackable mass product, once designed for schools and public building, will be usable at home as well as in gastronomy.

The glass designer Isabel Hamm was inspired by a classic which - in "purest design" - is already available at Utensil: The Erlenmeyer flask. Equipped with a spout and lid, the well-known glass object from chemistry lessons will certainly find it's way into kitchens and onto tables once it's been filled with olive oil. By modification, the designers create objects with new options for use, yet the object's origin is clearly communicated. The objects of the new UTENSIL KOLLEKTION play with our perception of the accustomed, they can irritating or persuasive by their self-evidence and subtlety.

Participating Designers: Eric Degenhardt (D), Dreikant (D), Hrafnkell Birgisson (DK), Isabel Hamm (D), Frackenpohl Poulheim (D), Isabel Bürgin (CH), Jörg Mennickheim / Moritz Halfmann (D), Joachim Lindenbeck (D)