Useful Living

Korean designer Sanghyeok Lee is the winner of Time to Design 2013 with a series of ready-to-assemble furniture.

For three months, the Danish Art Workshop has served as a framed for Sanghyeok Lee’s project, Useful Living. Here he has been influence by classic Danish furniture, design philosophy and details in his refinement of the project. The result is a series of furniture in oak and brass; a bookcase, a rack, and a chair.

About the project Sanghyeok Lee says: “When I started on the project, my biggest challenge was the art of restriction. How far should and could I reach in three months? Useful Living is a further development of Useful Arbeitsloser (“Jobless”). Through experimentation, I wanted to see what Useful Living could become in terms of functions. I am very detail oriented, perhaps because of my Korean background, and during the process, I decided to focus on three pieces of furniture”.

Useful, thought-through and meaningful is the essence behind the series. The three products share the structural concept but each have their own story. The oak is a classic Danish choice for wooden furniture and the brass joint are custom designed. Useful Living mimics scaffolding structures in construction sites. In its flexible design, it mimics the nomadic lifestyle of a young designer.

In Useful Shelf Lee experimented with the surface through a wood-smoke technique. In Useful Rack, he focused on creating an aesthetically pleasing design. Finally, Useful Chair has a minimal but strong structure and tells a story, which will be complete once a person sits down in it.

Useful Living
Bookcase, rank and chair
Design: Sanghyeok Lee
Materials: oak and brass
Year: 2013