Tangens

Project

269624

Status

Submitted

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS AWARDS : existing completed examples

Project title

Tangens

Full project title

Description

Tangens is an office furniture born out of today’s circumstances and rapidly changing work environments. Combining the comfort of a home office with the modularity required for the contemporary agile workspace, with a sustainable approach from cradle to cradle.

Where was your project implemented in the EU?

When was your project implemented?

Has your project benefited from EU programmes or funds?

Which programme(s) or fund(s)? Provide the name of the programme(s)/fund(s), the strand/action line as relevant and the year.

Please provide a summary of your project

Our goal is to create modularly assembled, lightweight office furniture for today’s needs, which can be easily arranged in space due to their lightness but also provide the comfort of a home office environment designed for the living room. The ease of variability makes Tangens the ideal equipment for an agile workspace. The Tangens furniture product range was born from and inspired by the desire of focusing on the value of human relationships in today’s changed circumstances. Tangens: touch and togetherness. The embracing motif is also apparent in the products.  The curved tubular frame  - which embraces and gives form to the warm and soft materials - shows a respect for tradition, recalling the graphic Bauhaus world. The use of sustainable materials shows reverence for the future, a homage to the power of nature. Our selected materials are all high quality and designed for long term use. We have chosen textiles made of highly wear-resistant recycled plastic and woven wool for the collection. The different textures and colors provide endless variability, and the combinations of elements of our through, well-conceived material palette always result in a harmonious overall picture. Being in the office means sitting. That is why we paid special attention to our seating furniture elements.  The hard, stretched seating surfaces and the seat height, increased by a few centimeters, are both optimal in helping the long time spent sitting, maintaining concentration, and supporting our body. We are all different: the wide seating surfaces are comfortable for all body shapes and can be easily adapted with a wide range of additional functional cushions. Long term - that is the motto of Tangens production. Tangens is a project made together with Rotte Group with the support of the Hungarian Fashion and Design Agency’s designLAB incubator program. The synergy created by the cooperation of Rotte's factories results in

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of sustainability and how these have been met

Our selected materials are all high quality and designed for long term use. Keeping the values of environmental awareness and sustainability in mind, we rely on resources that do not destroy the environment in order to achieve our goals or are durable enough to be used for a lifetime. We have chosen textiles made of highly wear-resistant recycled PET bottles and woven wool for the collection, which harmonize perfectly and complement the colors. The sintering of steel pipes is carried out on a modern automated line that recycles the excess generated during powder coating. The raw material of the wooden elements is plywood with good structural stability, which is the best choice for our environmentally friendly furniture product range due to its recycled nature and the minimal amount of cutting waste. The seating surfaces are built on a durable wave spring load-bearing structure with a lifecycle that spans generations. The fillers also include, where possible, recycled felt and ground materials. The upholstered elements are carefully made by hand.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these have been met

The Tangens furniture product range focuses on the value of human relationships. Direct human relationships have always been one of our most important values, and their absence has only shed more light on their importance in today’s changed circumstances. The Tangens furniture product range was born from and inspired by this desire. We arrived at the tangible structure of the furniture by delving deep into the metaphors of embracing and touching. This motif is also apparent in the products. The power of cold, masculine metal embraces and gives form to the warm, soft, feminine materials and the wood and textile elements. Their contact, their harmony, is more than the sum of their parts: they create new energy. The curved tubular frame shows a respect for tradition, recalling the graphic Bauhaus world. The use of sustainable materials shows reverence for the future, a homage to the power of nature. Tangens: touch and togetherness. These aspects are reflected in fine-touch, high-quality materials and the playful contrast of cold and warm sensations. Modularity and free combinability are thus perfectly realized in terms of materials and colors, ensuring the end result is always uniform and harmonious.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of inclusion and how these have been met

Optimal logistics features not only help with transport, disassembly and assembly, but the ergonomic design also provides sustainability. A respect for nature, the use of sustainable materials in the collection, recycling and circularity in mind in the design phase are all important values for us. The high-quality materials applied withstand constant load, and the Velcro solution used by the covers makes it easy to change – whether it's for cleaning or changing the color for a new look. In the spirit of social responsibility, customers can offer their office furniture in good condition but being replaced due to a design refresh or any other reason, to schools, kindergartens, dormitories, and children’s homes. We will find the institution, they cover the cost of transportation, and we deliver it to the right place.

Please give information on the results/impacts achieved by your project in relation to the category you apply for

Luckily we receive positive feedback. In addition to practicability, we also managed to speak to people’s heart: customizability, the harmony of colors and materials and the choice of high quality materials also contributed to this greatly. Regarding the current situation, what motivated me was to pay attention to the importance of human connections: the metaphor of embracing also appears on the objects themselves, as the hard structure wraps around the delicate materials. The establishment of agile office spaces is an absolute relevant topic: with its modularity, the Tangens reflects well on that. The furniture items can be shaped well to various builds in themselves already, and they fit into each other in a manner allowing the user to create various spatial arrangements in an instant. This is often necessary in today’s office life, in the case of team work. Working in an office usually equals sedentary work, this is why the Tangens focuses on this area exactly. The hard seating surfaces are built on a wave spring wooden frame structure, where the slightly elevated seating level of the furniture facilitates concentration. Subtleties like the ability to turn the container into a magazine rack or a flower holder also make its use loveable.

Please explain the way citizens benefiting from or affected by the project and civil society have been involved in the project and what has been the impact of this involvement on the project

In recent years, the spread of home office areas has been accompanied by a wealth of experience, along with all its advantages and difficulties. Although the comfort and relaxed atmosphere of the home may often have a good effect on creativity and honest teamwork, at the same time it is more difficult to stay focused for many people, the individual bears greater responsibility, and people may miss the experiences of a social life. Once again, we are confronted with the collective experience that no matter our jobs and roles, we are all humans, bosses and employees alike. The Tangens furniture family smuggles this humanness and democratic atmosphere back into the workplace, where we will return sooner or later. The ease of variability makes Tangens the ideal equipment for an agile workspace: the furniture seamlessly follows and helps dynamically changing work processes, team compositions, and functional needs. It can be customized thanks to its modular structure, dynamically adapting to any space and task. It easily adapts to the task and performance-oriented office atmosphere, bringing playfulness and transparency into everyday life. Because it is the personal presence of the people and not the furniture that dominates the space, Tangens promotes a sense of belonging and team cohesion. The furniture family provides a solution for every aspect of office life: from isolated thinking through confidential discussions to group work.

Please highlight the innovative character of the project

From a designer’s side, the whole process was fruitful. Ensuring the stability of the thin tubular frame, in addition to aesthetic, was an important area of development: we dived deep into material research. I am happy that we were able to use recycled and natural materials in several places both in terms of upholstery fabrics and fillings. Rotte’s plant is absolutely well-equipped: powder coating, for instance, is carried out by automated lines that circulate the surplus back. The combination of modern innovation and traditional technologies is a guarantee of high quality.  

Please explain how the project led to results or learnings which could be transferred to other interested parties

In the course of designing the Tangens, during the material research phase, we looked around for available sustainable fabrics on the market and started looking for solutions of sustainability of the furniture, therefore we had a cooperation with Materio from Prague to search for the best stuffing material to use for the sitting parts of the sofas and armchairs and eliminate polyurethane spong, It’s still under proccess, although this could be a huge step in the field of the sustainability of upholstered furniture and we'll be happy to share the results.  

Is an evaluation report or any relevant independent evaluation source available?

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed project has not been proposed for the Awards more than once under the same category and that it has not been subject to any type of investigation, which could lead to a financial correction because of irregularities or fraud.