EOOS: Gernot Bohmann, Harald Gründl (Mitte) and Martin Bergman. Photo: Udo Titz
EOOS consists of Martin Bergmann (*1963 in Lienz/East Tyrol), Gernot Bohmann (*1968, Krieglach/Steiermark) and Harald Gründl (*1967, Vienna). After graduating from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, they founded their joint firm EOOS in 1995. Besides furniture and product design, EOOS also does shop design for clients like Giorgio Armani, Adidas, Alessi, Bulthaup, Bene, Duravit, Walter Knoll, Keilhauer, Matteograssi and Zumtobel.
For EOOS, design is a poetic discipline and a cultural service to society. EOOS Basic Research investigates rituals, myths and intuitive images as part of its “poetic analysis”. The company’s first books, “The Death of Fashion” and ”The Cooked Kitchen”, are available from publishers SpringerWienNewYork. EOOS has won more than 40 international awards to date, including the 2004 Italian design prize Compasso d’Oro for Kube, produced by Matteograssi. In 2007, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF and daily newspaper Die Presse voted EOOS ”Austrians of the Year“ in the Creative Industries category.
1. What impact can design have on the sustainability of production conditions?
We’re currently working on a green pilot project with one of our major clients. We were able to persuade the company to join us in investing in and learning from this project. They financed a position that helps us enter every part, every gram of material and every kilometre of transport into a programme that then allows us to assess the product‘s environmental compatibility and think about alternatives. EOOS invested six months of research into this area in order to investigate the design-relevant impact that sustainable product development has on our firm. It’s really interesting to see that, right from the start of the design process, you make totally different decisions than you might have made just a short time ago. With this project, for instance, we decided on a typology that manages with very few casing components. Besides saving moulding costs, that also makes the product easier to recycle. A simple example of an easy way to combine ecology with economy. The idea is that, by the end of the process, we finish up with a product that is manufactured entirely in Germany, without any components from suppliers in the Far East as is currently the case. And at a price that makes you think it must have been made in China. And, of course, it’s 100 percent recyclable.
2. How sustainable is the sustainability trend?
Design isn’t just going through a new trend, it’s on the threshold of a paradigm shift. Things just can’t carry on as they are. Western civilisation’s ecological footprint is far too high, and science has long since corroborated the impact our wasteful consumption culture is having on nature. We have to reduce our resource usage and pollutant emissions dramatically. The Club of Rome has suggested that we halve the amount of resources we use. In many cases, far from being utopian, that is in fact already technically feasible and could be implemented immediately. It‘s time for design to change and set an example with positive scenarios that consumers interpret not just as a trend but as a whole new way of life. That’s the only way more people in the world will be able to lead a better life in future.
3. What can a designer contribute when it comes to Green Design in the furniture sector?
Designers will probably find it pretty difficult to change the system on their own. To start with, it takes furniture manufacturers who realise the seriousness of the situation and, together with the design and technology people, dream up new products. We all have to change the way we think. Designers have had to moderate complex production processes before now. That will become even more of a challenge. A lone individual can hardly be expected to know everything that‘s needed to design more sustainable furniture. This year we won a German award for green design on the grounds that the piece of furniture in question is likely to be handed down to subsequent generations and is thus very ecological. It’s certainly true that the lifespan of a piece of furniture is an important criterion, but we can’t afford to make it that easy for ourselves. There’s more to Green Design than a design language that takes longer to become obsolete.
4. What arguments could persuade customers to invest more in quality and consume fewer cheap mass-produced products, which tend to be less durable and more ecologically detrimental?
One way would be to introduce laws that encourage people to buy ecological products and make it unattractive to buy ecologically harmful products. We can already see that happening in the automotive industry. Something has to change, even if the car lobby wants to prevent it. Producing waste is already expensive and ought to become even more expensive. If a product’s ecological impact was slapped on top of the price, consumers would be shocked. But when it comes to furniture design, there are some products that just won’t last for ever, and which you might not be able to use forever either. Carpets are a good example. But if you can give the carpet – made entirely of recycled carpets – back to the company that made it, shorter usage scenarios can actually be ecologically viable. Maybe, instead of owning everything, we could just pay for using it. All this naturally calls for consumers’ creativity and support as well.
5. What are the aesthetic alternatives to classic (organic) solid wood furniture?
You could say that classic solid wood furniture is beautiful anyway and we don’t need any aesthetic alternative (laughs). But it’s also true that, when it comes to the green debate, emotional logic doesn’t always serve the purpose. A jute shopping bag might be more environmentally harmful than a plastic bag. You have to do a lot of sums to see what‘s really better in a certain case. That’s something we just have to get used to. A solid wood chair can – but needn’t necessarily – be greener than a plastic chair. But the plastic chair might even be greener. In the sense of a closed technical food chain, the technological material is probably even superior to the natural material.
6. What do you consider an environmental sin and where would you like to see alternative solutions?
The current CO2 emissions of cars. Even though we live in a rich country that numbers amongst the world leaders in certain areas of technology, we in Austria are still a long way from reaching the climate protection target agreed in the Kyoto Protocol. CO2 emissions are rising all the time, especially in the transportation sector, even though they ought to be dropping dramatically. It takes a fully grown tree 160 years to break down the average annual CO2 emissions of a single car via photosynthesis! That means everyone who drives a car would have to have 160 fully-grown-trees in his garden. That’s a good illustration of how we’re borrowing from nature that isn’t actually available to us. We did a design study on this particular problem: we called it ‘Plant 1’. An algae power plant on the area of a garage that produces enough biofuel to do 10,000 km a year in a three-litre car. Once a week, algae oil is filtered out in transparent bioreactor rods and converted into biofuel that is then used to fill the tank of a three-litre car. A CO2-neutral system that ensures energy-independent mobility. We checked all the data with the University of Vienna and the system would be technically feasible. For EOOS, design is a poetic discipline, and that was the starting point for this project too: modern high tech takes the origin of the world, the development of the earth’s atmosphere from the algae in the oceans, and uses it to create a green biofuel station in your garden – the concurrence of archaism and hightech. It goes without saying that the appearance of the algae filling station is such that you’re quite happy to put it in your garden! In future, we will have to think in terms of systems rather than products!
Further information: www.eoos.com
11. May 2009
Categories: Designers in Dialogue, green design, Trends
Tags: Adidas, Alessi, Austrians of the Year, Bene, biofuel, bioreactor, Bulthaup, climate protection target, Club of Rome, Compasso d’Oro, Designers in Dialogue, Die Presse, Duravit, ecological footprint, ecology, EOOS, Gernot Bohmann, Giorgio Armani, green design, Harald Gründl, innovations, Keilhauer, Martin Bergmann, Matteograssi, ORF, organic, Plant 1, solid wood furniture, Springer Verlag, sustainability, The Cooked Kitchen, The Death of Fashion, Trends, Wien, Zumtobel
