DANZO STUDIO

TAIPEI-BASED DANZO STUDIO DELIVERS DESIGNS WITH A UNIQUE LIFE CYCLE, SPIRIT AND, AT TIMES, TOPOGRAPHIES TOO. 

Tell us about DANZO studio, who you are and what you do?

Danzo Studio was founded in 2013 in Taipei, Taiwan by designers Wei-Lun Tseng, a graduate from Design Academy Eindhoven and I-Han Chen from HDK, Sweden. Starting up as an entrepreneurial design brand, we aspire   to present superior design products with sharp messages and a unique life circle and spirit to the world.

Could you please introduce your LANDSCAPE series and inspiration for the project?

At the beginning, we noticed that there were   always a lot of small gadgets on the table surface, all of which  are  different in size and shape. So, we imagined that they were   like different animals or creatures, and different kinds of animals should have different kinds of habitats. To find small gadgets a comfortable habitat, we redesigned the lids of the boxes to create an open space for people to store and display their personal belongings.

After a long process of designing and manufacturing, it became a series of organizers that can be used to manipulate the tabletop surface by creating specific functional terrains for storing small gadgets.

 

Are the five landscapes all based on real places?

We can not actually tell you if   they are based on real places or not, since we have landscapes that are so diversified in Taiwan, but we do use a lot of images that   come from what we have seen to match the functionalities that we are trying to create. The series contains five choices of terrains; each providing unique functions for various uses.

Valley
Inspired by the longitudinal valley of east Taiwan, Valley is suitable for wide stuff such as glasses, a smartphone, or business cards. Except for the storage space within the box, the ridges go up and down from both front and side views creating   multidimensional spaces for storage.

 

Hill
This landscape   is mainly designed for jewelry and accessories. Hill consists of three elevations that differ in size, each of which has   one sink on the top, which is perfect for placing rings, necklaces, and earrings. Bracelets and watches can be stored around the elevation offering   a good way of displaying   accessories.

 

Volcano
Volcano breaks the stereotype of an ordinary box by allowing for the users to put pens, rulers, and markers into the crater. The lines of lava that come from the crater divide the lid surface into four sections, making the landscape very suitable for small stationery products such as paper clips, pins, paper marks and erasers.

 

Waterfall
In this landscape  two   big platforms are free for use. Waterfall is divided into two sections, which are the river on the highland and the lower lake. It is a good home for   placing keys, lighters, tools, and even larger objects such as   a wallet.

 

Basic
Basic stands as a special element in the Landscape series. It is mainly designed for stacking   beneath the other   four terrains, allowing for one to build   up vertical structures of boxes and create more space on a table, while it can also be used independently.

Could you talk about your choice of materials?

ADC12 Aluminum alloy fulfills our standards in weight, finishing, and even in terms of how the melted liquid Aluminum flows perfectly through the molds of   sophisticated shapes. We had also thought about using   copper as material, but at last it was   just too heavy.

It is a little scary when we start needing landscapes for our things – are you at all worried? Are we making room for too many things in the world?

It depends on people. I think there is no such thing as “a perfect design” and people will probably never actually “need” Landscapes. A nice cup of coffee might be a good example, people do not need it, but they fell extra good about it. What we are trying to do now is quite the same thing: we produce products that are well designed, of a   high quality and people feel good to have them somewhere in their daily lives.

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