Design Social Club + The Natural Studio
Doing better with less, starting from little you have to think of a useful, functional and future-proof object. Here, cans become cars for children and cans are transformed into storage boxes, in African families everyday life is improving thanks to the culture of the art of “bricolage“. It was in Ethiopia in the city of Addis Ababa that they met this designer duo. Both on a long road, one had traveled the world from Chos Malal, a small town at the gates of Patagonia, and the other had left French Auvergne to explore the roads of East Africa. An experience for everyone that allowed them to forge a common bond around African ingenuity. The Natural Studio and the Design Social Club thus wanted to combine their skills to jointly approach the art of resourcefulness in a work at the heart of a theme that connects them, travel.
S U P E R P A N C H O is an elementary piece of luggage that provides transport and protection for the traveler, a reliable and secure traveling companion. A bag designed as a combination of folds which, with the help of a central cross, offers a simple construction principle which allows the container to be adapted to the contents. While retaining a traditional backpack functionality, it can thus contain large volumes or smaller. This subtle origami game provides a tight volume suitable for what it carries. Once unfolded, the bag becomes a protective canvas. Lying on the ground, the latter protects from moisture, stretched between two supports it hides from the sun and the wind, dressed like a cape it protects from the rain. An essential tool for adapting because travel sometimes takes you to experience the natural world outside the protections of our cities. A climatic reality that is imposed on the African continent as in many regions of the world and which all travelers have already experienced. A functional and easy to produce principle that also supports a social value by wanting to be free of rights. The plans can thus be viewed and modified by anyone across the world.
S U P E R P A N C H O is above all a constructive principle transforming a simple canvas into an ingenious tool that invites the most modest of trips. An elementary baggage within the reach of anyone who aspires to leave. Inexpensive Materials are assembled around a radical design that expresses raw beauty, leaving the cuts, seams and assemblies felt. This duo of designers offers to discover a wild design in the spirit of “Do It Yourself“, an invitation to travel expressed in a constructive, aesthetic, functional and poetic principle.
Text and images by Pierre K. (DSC)