USE IT, KITCHEN CONTAINERS FOR AUTHENTICS
One of our studio’s most important collaborations of the 1990s took place with the German company Authentics, known for pioneering the products of translucent polypropylene, striking in their thinness, fine texture, and luminous color effects.
Asking for a universal set of plastic containers, the Authentics’ owner Hans Maier-Aichen urged to “make them more than simple”. The containers had to become dignified enough to escape a cheap connotation of kitchen objects, to find use in the bathroom, bedroom, even office.
In the end, a series of modular toy-like blocks looked almost generic, reminiscent of Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s glass cubes or the American refrigerator ware of the 1940s. New was their immaterial lightness and ethereal translucent colors, which the company changed every season. When translucent colors went out of fashion, our containers stayed on the market - produced in matte black.
In 1997, Use It was accepted in the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
