Even in
new-look, off-the-wall offices, certain older objects never seem to
go out of style. A colorful case in point: the Uten.Silo, a
wall-mounted, plastic storage device that's designed to combat the
accumulation of desktop detritus -- and to keep stuff on the wall.
Recently reintroduced by the Vitra Design Museum, Uten.Silo (
originally called Wall-All ) was created in the late 1960s by
Dorothee Becker, a German mom trying to amuse her kids with a
totemic sculpture of geometrical notches. Though her concept was
first fashioned in wood, her then-husband, lighting designer and
manufacturer Ingo Maurer, realized that the object was not only
useful to adults but also perfectly suited to the miracle material
of the moment: plastic.
"The cool thing about the Uten.Silo is that it's as relevant
today as it was when it was introduced in 1969," says Murray Moss,
owner and curator of Moss, a purveyor of high-design objects in
SoHo, New York. "It turns out that the so-called paperless society
is not so paperless after all. If anything, we have more clutter. We
still need an easy place to put and retrieve things. This object
gives us a sense of organized chaos."
The Uten.Silo can be found at Moss, Ingo Maurer, and the MoMA
Design Stores in New York, as well as in museum and design shops
nationwide. The unit, which retails for about $260, is available in
white, red, or black.
Bonnie Schwartz ( bonnie9878@aol.com ) is a
freelance writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She contributes
frequently to Fast Company.