‘Stayfit’ bench
The oldest machinery workshop in Finland is in Fiskars, a village of craftspeople and creatives about an hour northwest of Helsinki. This gable-roofed red brick structure, built in 1837, has been home, since 1993, to Nikari, a maker of high-quality sustainable wood products. Its catalogue encompasses some of the most celebrated names in Nordic design – from Alvar Aalto and Kaj Franck to Louise Campbell and Claesson Koivisto Rune. So the addition of a South Korean designer to its roster, for this year’s Wallpaper* Handmade, has been a gamble of sorts.
To say that Kunsik Choi comes from a variegated background would be an understatement. Born in South Korea, he studied industrial design at Politecnico di Milano before returning to Asia for work. A visit to Kitani, a Japanese manufacturer specialising in Nordic design, inspired him to enrol in a three-year cabinetry course at Swedish craft school Capellagården. His graduation project, a dollhouse-like storage system made from 589 pieces of pear, maple and wenge, found its way to the 2016 Stockholm Furniture Fair, where it caught the eye of our interiors director Amy Heffernan, who felt Choi, now based in Malmö, would make an excellent collaborator for Handmade.
The Wellness + Wonder theme of this year’s exhibition reminded Choi of the eight dimensions of wellness, a model proposed by the US Department of Health and Human Services. It suggests that overall wellness comprises eight facets: emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social and spiritual. ‘Of the eight categories, I was most interested in the physical,’ says Choi. His thoughts turned to friends who were exercising at home with increasing frequency as they didn’t have time to head to the gym. Traditional gym equipment, he believes, tends to be a domestic eyesore. So he wanted to create something that could accommodate a wide range of physical exercises while blending seamlessly into a modern, minimalist abode.
Choi’s solution was a wooden bench that is sturdy enough to double as a plyometric box, comfortable enough for horizontal workouts, with a detachable handle on top and a storage rack for dumbbells and other fitness paraphernalia underneath.»