Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

These wooden shelving units and tables have been designed by South Korean designer Lee Sanghyeok to look like scaffolding (+ slideshow).

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

The Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) furniture range by Lee Sanghyeok includes two shelving units and two tables of different sizes.

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

The lightweight wooden furniture features a similar criss-crossing structure as building scaffolding and is fixed together with polished brass joints.

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

Sanghyeok claims that scaffolding can be seen as a metaphor for a designer who, like himself, lives and who works in a foreign country. “Scaffolding is is always passed by, constructed and moved away without much attention, but is still a necessary element in construction sites,” he said.

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

The Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) project was first exhibited at Nomadismi at Gallery Altai, Milan earlier this year.

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

Sanghyeok Lee studied at Design Academy Eindhoven and now runs his own studio in Berlin, Germany. His past projects include a table where closing one drawer causes another to shoot out at random, which won second prize at the [D3] Contest at imm cologne in 2012.

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

Other furniture we’ve featured on Dezeen recently includes an expanding shelving unit by Stephanie Hornig that can bunch up or stretch out depending on available space, storage units made with textile skins by Meike Harde and furniture by Emiel Remmelts that require concrete blocks, bricks and magazine file boxes to prop up one end.

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

See more shelving on Dezeen »
See our furniture archives »

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

Photography by Jaeuk Lee, courtesy of Lee Sanghyeok.

Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) by Lee Sanghyeok

The post Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless)
by Lee Sanghyeok
appeared first on Dezeen.

Listen to Your Hands by Lee Sanghyeok

Listen to Your Hands by Lee Sanghyeok

Cologne 2012: closing one drawer of Lee Sanghyeok‘s table causes another to shoot out at random. The project won second prize at the [D3] Contest at imm cologne this week.

Watch this movie on Dezeen Screen »

Called Listen to Your Hands, the chest has multiple drawers connected by a central air chamber.

Listen to Your Hands by Lee Sanghyeok

Closing a drawer quickly causes a sudden burst of air to force another drawer out elsewhere. The cabinet can only be completely closed by shutting each drawer in turn slowly and deliberately.

Listen to Your Hands by Lee Sanghyeok

The project was first presented at Lee Sanghyeok’s graduation from the Design Academy Eindhoven last year.

Listen to Your Hands by Lee Sanghyeok

First prize at the [D3] Contest was awarded to Jólan van der Wiel for his machine that uses magnets to draw furniture out of a vat of liquid.

Listen to Your Hands by Lee Sanghyeok

Photos and video are by Minseong Wang.

Here are some more details from Lee Sanghyeok:


Listen to your hands is about how we can make a relationship with inanimate things in our domestic space, like furniture. How we connect to the furniture around us, how we experience and communicate with it.

Listen to your hands looks at the most sensitive of human senses, touch; it communicates a whole world of information to us and it explores how we can create a relationship to an object, a sort of dialogue, through touch.

Listen to your hands is a desk with drawers. A push of one drawer pulls out another as if in direct conversation with the action. A gentle closing of a drawer keeps the others intact thus communicating to us that we need to act with intention, we need to listen with our hands.

Lee Sanghyeok creates furniture, objects and nice ideas.