Introducing Pongo

We feel strongly that great designs appear to be effort­less.  Objects of desire that func­tion, while main­tain­ing a state of com­fort.  Our design method­ol­ogy trans­lates proven and estab­lished clas­sics into con­tem­po­rary meth­ods of mak­ing.  This trans­la­tion serves to invert a new iden­tity for a famil­iar strategy.

For this project, we tack­led the twisted-stick coat rack as a typol­ogy.  Our first incli­na­tion was to melt and weld these sticks together.  Though imprac­ti­cal, it would have been pos­si­ble to pur­chase a tree and carve this object out as a solid.  Instead we looked to 5-axis milling as an oper­a­tion to ensure three indi­vid­ual sticks could be carved effi­ciently, shipped effi­ciently, and still align pre­cisely with mechan­i­cal fas­ten­ers.  Clever spi­ral­ing fas­tener place­ment allows the sin­gle com­po­nent to attach to itself, instead of requir­ing vari­a­tion between the sticks.  In doing so, we were faced with the chal­lenge of pro­duc­ing the moment in the design we are most fond of — the belly but­tons.  These inter­nal­ized nubs rhetor­i­cally call for the bolts.  The three sticks wrap around each other in such a way that the bolts align with the neigh­bor­ing parts, mak­ing the assem­bly a sim­ple task that requires no instruc­tion manual.

We hope you can help Pongo find a great home.