About EOOS

Design has its impact, and this impact can be influenced. Our present day requires informed design, innovative strategies and a new understanding of the roles of those involved. Design of the future requires courage, determination and respect. It must intervene in prevailing systems, both on the level of the manufacturing of goods and societal developments. Only if the transition from a linear to a circular economy succeeds can the conditions to sustain life on the planet change. Designers and manufacturers must question and at the same time redefine established processes in design and production.

Cultural Impact

In the past thirty years, furniture design at EOOS has continued to evolve.

Today, we are able to realize numerous furniture projects in close cooperation with leading international manufacturers, which confidently and respectfully uphold the tradition and corporate culture of the companies. This development and our approach to design in the respective company context are illustrated through various examples.

The cultural capital of design is difficult to measure. While the historiography of furniture and product design passes its verdict from a temporal distance, designers and manufacturers advance innovations in the here and now while flexibly responding to changing needs and aesthetic ideals. The predilections of the market can differ significantly from the judgment of curators, collectors and critics. EOOS has opted for the market without blindly fulfilling its demands. Our interest in fashions, trends and zeitgeist is limited, yet we have survived the dictates of the market. We strive for durable and recyclable products. Design is also committed to aesthetics, which fluctuates with the changing times. We aim for an aesthetic consensus that is relevant and enduring. The abiding success of many products proves us right.

Poetical Impact

In the early days of EOOS, the poetical analysis introduced a meta level into our practice that helped determine the general design direction of projects beyond the individual tastes or approaches of the three studio founders. During the shop design phase, it became a reliable tool for developing specific brand narratives for different clients and winning competitions with catchy stories, images and new sales rituals. The international registration of Poetical Analysis® for the services of a design office was not intended to be taken all too seriously. Several examples of this design practice manifest either through associative images or stories. The transformation of objects, converting from one functional state to another, was a tactic involving storytelling and thus poetry, which helped the studio to secure its first commissions and stand out among competitors.

Today, the poetical analysis is less explicit and primarily serves an approach to understand the brand that EOOS is working for and to develop specific design solutions. It still provides a vocabulary and a language that improves internal communication within the studio, but is also effective with clients. It is a tool to stake out a field, a space where we can best unfold our talents in work for the client. A word, a sentence, an image guides the design process – it does not focus on a specific product but points the way.

For EOOS, the poetical analysis means resisting the growing banalization of the design discipline; it is a tool for innovation and social cement. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Eoos, one of the four horses drawing the sun chariot, is embroiled in Phaethon’s death ride. The earth is set ablaze, and Zeus must kill the son of the sun god in order to save the earth. This ancient story turns out to be alarmingly topical today, in the age of the climate crisis.

Social Impact

Since 2010, EOOS has engaged in the field of social design. This beginning marked the end of a ten-year phase in which the studio had successfully realized shop design projects for clients such as Armani and Adidas. The certification as a “Verified SocialEnterprise” by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy acknowledges that we have professionalized our working methods and that the social impact of design comes first in these collaborations with foundations and NGOs. Profits are reinvested to start new projects and make innovative solutions available as open design.

Social impact is gauged using a staircase model. What initially appears to be an unattainable goal –safe sanitation for 3.5 billion people – can be achieved through the strategy of “Indirect Impact.” You don’t achieve the goal all by yourself, rather you find partners to help you accomplish it. In our case, these are leading international sanitary manufacturers.

We have mastered the first three steps after more than ten years with the support of the Gates Foundation. Technologies were developed, tested in the Global South and the first  manufacturers have started to implement the Reinvented Toilet. In the “Outcome” phase (4–6), we rely on our many years of experience with manufacturers in Europe and our design expertise in furniture and product design. With our open design strategy, we have also made the leap to impact level 7 with the help of NGOs. Now we are working with international manufacturers of sanitary products to bring the Reinvented Toilet from developed markets to people in the Global South. The scaling effects should significantly reduce costs in bottom-of-thepyramid (BoP) markets.