Thirty years ago, Martin Bergmann, Gernot Bohmann, and Harald Gruendl founded the Vienna-based design studio EOOS. Named after one of the four horses that draw the chariot of the sun god Helios, the studio is celebrating its milestone anniversary with the publication of EOOS Designing Impact, released by Lars Müller Publishers.
Text: Isabella Marboe, genau!
The butterfly on the book cover is barely recognisable, but the essence is clear and distinct. Multi-layered, fragile and beautiful. The many fine lines in blue, yellow and red circle an elliptical centre; if you follow them across the flap of the cover, you can see both halves. They are connected and represent the two areas of EOOS: classic product and social design. The designers want it to be interpreted as a butterfly, in the spirit of Edward N. Lorenz, but it could also be a pair of eyes or the symbol for infinity. ‘Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?’
b2 workshop kitchen, Bulthaup, 2008, photo: bulthaup
Not cosy, but cool
The b2 workshop kitchen for Bulthaup brought them international success. It was not cosy, but cool; not homely, but simple, reduced to its essence. A workbench instead of a kitchen unit, a hotplate instead of a stove, no wall or base units, but a box for everything, nothing built-in, everything free-standing, mobile and flexible. In 1995, Martin Bergmann, Gernot Bohmann and Harald Gruendl founded their studio and named it EOOS – after one of the four stallions that pulled the chariot of the sun god Helios across the sky. According to mythology, Zeus will have to kill the son of the sun god to save the burning earth. Today, that seems almost visionary. EOOS draws on the power of myth; its path to progressive design leads through poetic analysis.
The power of myth
‘Our sympathy lies with error, paradox and immediate thought – a journey with light luggage,’ the three designers initially stated. Thirty years later, they reflect on their work in the book ‘EOOS Designing Impact – Impact as a Design Goal.’ It is full of stories, metaphors and beautiful, meaningful sentences. And, of course, full of photos of good design and sketches. EOOS works for the best companies in the world and is always profound in its work. For Alessi, they designed a very elegant stainless steel urn, stylishly named Life Pot. The starting point for this was the ashes left behind by small animals, cats, dogs and humans. Urns of different sizes can be screwed together to form steles, allowing the connection to the pet to be maintained even after death.
Cooking together
But the most important thing about the kitchen is what happens there. A kitchen nourishes in many ways. It is a place where people cook, eat, talk, celebrate, argue, cry, confess, reconcile, laugh and enjoy each other's company. The intensive research work on the workshop kitchen also shaped this first ‘social design’ project by EOOS. In 2015, 700,000 refugees arrived in Austria, most of them in transit, but there were many of them and they were there for the time being. At that time, Elke Delugan-Meissl curated the Austrian contribution to the Architecture Biennale in Venice. She referred to the situation and invited the offices Caramel, EOOS and theNextENTERprise to convert a vacant building into temporary refugee accommodation.
EOOS ended up at the Erdberg building, a former training centre for the border police. Double rooms along corridors without natural light, but at least arranged in two rows around the sanitary and utility areas. This time, Thomas More's ‘Utopia’ set the tone, with the designers conceiving the refugee accommodation as a model of a utopian society in which everyone has a job. This was not legally possible, but the refugees should be able to engage in meaningful activities – and as independently as possible from automated food distribution. A do-it-yourself workshop kitchen was perfect for this. Because it creates more than just space: it creates the opportunity to live and contribute one's own culture and to help shape one's temporary home while passing through. You can even run an improvised barber shop on a dining table.
Do it yourself
EOOS scaled the workshop kitchen to its new use and reduced its design to a rudimentary minimum. Finally, there were 18 pictograms with do-it-yourself instructions for the most basic furniture such as stackable stools, tables, benches and wall panels. A formwork panel manufacturer donated 20 tonnes of material, and a cordless screwdriver was all that was needed to make the furniture from cut-to-size yellow formwork panels. The building had its own workshops for cutting the panels to size. While six hundred people lived on the four floors of the building, around a thousand pieces of furniture were built. EOOS kept a list of this. The book shows one page from it: the stool with a seat height of 58 cm was built 224 times, the high dining table 22 times, and the low one 24 times. Food from many countries was cooked on them. EOOS implemented the principle of ‘open design’ here for the first time.
Safe Tap V2, 2024, photography: © Lucky Lugogwana
Clean water for the world
For the Swiss water research institute Eawag, they developed a mobile toilet that separates urine and faeces. This idea led to the ‘Blue Diversion Toilet’ made of blue plastic, which is adapted to the living conditions of a slum. It can be carried by two or three people along narrow, unpaved, muddy paths, has an integrated hand basin, and containers for urine and faeces, which are collected, treated and processed into fertiliser. They were first used in Uganda's capital Kampala in 2013 and have been continuously improved since then. The successor model converts urine into fertiliser itself. Since 2020, EOOS, the Georgia Tech Research Institute and Helbing Technik have been working on the next generation.
According to an information poster from the United Nations, around 2.2 billion people lacked basic handwashing facilities in 2022. That number has certainly grown since then. In the Global South, there are hardly any hygienic taps, which means that diseases spread more quickly. This costs human lives. The Covid pandemic also raised awareness of this issue at EOOS. They developed a self-initiated model that does not need to be turned on with your fingers, dispenses only a certain amount of water and is inexpensive to manufacture. After collaborating on product design with the largest and most renowned companies such as Alessi, Laufen and Armani, collaborations with major international aid organisations are slowly emerging in social design. With the support of the Red Cross and World Hunger Aid India, the 3D-printed prototypes have already been tested in schools for several months.
Lebensweg EOOS, sketch, 2024, © EOOS
‘Design has an impact, and that impact can be influenced. The present requires informed design, new strategies and a new understanding of the roles of those involved. The design of the future requires courage, determination and respect,’ demands EOOS. That applies to all of us.
Lars Müller (ed.), EOOS. Designing Impact, 16,5 x 24 cm, 460 Seiten, 530 illustrations, Softcover, Lars Müller Publishers, Zürich 2025, ISBN 978-3-03778-782-3
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