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No Country for Old Men - Self Initiated | 2012

Rethought elderly furniture & accessories that supports and empowers life & lifestyle

Elderly furniture aid objects that empower & enable

We initiated this project as a reaction to the scarcity of well-resolved and well-designed products for the elderly at-home. Because of this scarcity, the cosy and intimate home artfully built up over the years is invaded and eroded by alien medical products from the hospital context. For the blunt re-establishment of function, pride & ownership of these most used lifestyle support objects are relinquished. Our aim was to generate enthusiasm, desirability, a sense of ownership towards elderly aid objects. A healthy and robust relationship with them by nature ensures consistent benefits to the user twofold; both as safe physical support and also psychological reconciliation & acceptance of their advanced stage of life.

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Together Canes: walking aids for living, not just mobility

The activity spheres that exist in a home become fluid and blurred with modern living habits and mobile devices. The T, U and I-canes not only provide interstitial support to the elderly, but also allow them and modern dwellers to bring along their tea-time, a collection of magazines and books and also to prop up their iPad for viewing from the sofa or typing out an email or document.

MonoLight: a lamp that illuminates & magnifies

Eye-sight deteriorates with age and long hours in front of the computer screen. MonoLight is a handsome table lamp with a magnifying screen and LED components housed in a CNC-machined aluminium enclosure, anchored to a dodecagon-profiled marble base, to enable various degrees of viewing angles. The lamp comes in both portrait and landscape models to fit the reader’s viewing preference. To change the angle, a simple gesture of tilting the aluminium frame whilst the heft of the marble piece keeps it in the desired position.

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Assunta: a chair that helps us to get up

The aging process brings about a natural decline in muscle tone and bone density that contributes to decreased mobility, stability, strength and endurance. Actions that are taken for granted can become more difficult with age. Simply standing up from a chair is difficult for some seniors due to muscle mass and strength losses. This aggravated by our increasingly sedentary work-and-lifestyles.

Assunta assists by appropriating the user’s own body weight as leverage by stepping on the foot bar and as well as ensures stability by having arm-rests that follow this tilting motion. Informed by contemporary choices of material and expression, both aesthetical and functional, Assunta assumes its domestic role by assisting this common action of getting up from a chair as a considered and holistic product.

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