Hippos design: The New System

(jiří macek) Radim Babák and Ondřej Tobola from the Hippos design studio utilized the Foga modular aluminum system in their own way. They cut and carved, connected and revealed. Thus, they have constructed vases and a lighting object that represented one of the greatest events at Designblok this year.

The aluminum profiles, which Foga offers in a wide rage of variants and accessories, are mostly used at exhibitions, trade fair stalls, and structures for short-term events. However, the Czech distributor of Foga systems, Scenografie s.r.o, felt that the system contains more than one can see at first sight and asked several designer studios to apply the system in order to create their own objects. Thus, Henry Wielgus welded the system into a chair and a table that would perfectly fit in the Yellow Dwarf (a rockabilly version of the Red Dwarf); Hippos design took an 8-metre long profile and cut it by centimeters into 800 pieces from which they subsequently assembled a honeycomb, making use of the compositional possibilities of these profiles. The result is truly unbelievable. If you have already succumbed to the romanticism of machine production, you know what I am talking about – a paradise of cogwheels and gears.

The white and black vases, which were created by cutting the form of the vase into the tangle made from the system, reveals the construction beauty of the system and introduces the archetypal amphora to the company of maze and constructors and derivational equations. It is truly beautiful.

Both works won the Editors-in-Chief Award in the Best Prototype category at Designblok this year.

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