#HTE

Product Designer/Carpenter’s Modular Rolling Storage Unit

After completing a traditional carpenter’s apprenticeship, Hanover, Germany-based Theresa von Bodelschwingh worked as a journeyman carpenter for years before eventually pursuing a degree in design. Now she runs her own product design studio, where her grasp of both how to design things and how to make them has informed her practice.

“As a carpenter and designer, I deal a lot with different materials,” she writes. “In the field of tension between design, craftsmanship and art, I like rediscovering materials, finding new uses and creating combinations. In the end, my designs are mostly reduced with a clear design language. I often go back from a lot to very little and try to make my products special through the details and their materiality.”

A project of hers that caught my scout’s eye is her Sesame rolling storage unit with modular cabinets. Because the size of each corresponds with European paper size conventions–DIN A3, A4, A5 and A6—each size is half the dimensions of the succeeding size, allowing the cabinets to neatly correspond when stacked.

“Each body is equipped with a drawer that can be opened in both directions. If you stack the individual modules, the opening direction of the drawers varies depending on the structure. Magnets are embedded in the top and bottom panels so that the individual bodies can be stacked in the desired position. In order to enable all variants, they form a narrow grid.”

I could see this coming in very handy in a space-tight shop or sewing studio, with commonly-used items in the front-facing drawers, and less-frequently-used jigs or pieces of kit tucked away in the side-facing ones. And the A6-sized drawers would make a good home for drawings, patterns and plans. On top of that, I think it’s a great-looking piece.