◦ the misused, 2018 - 2020
at tainan, eindhoven and london
the misused began in 2017, when chen was working as an industrial designer in a furniture factory in an industrial park in taiwan, collecting sample hardware components as a professional habit. living with her grandmother in the countryside at the time, chen observed the humour and resourcefulness with which older generations improvised daily objects out of whatever was at hand — an observation that, combined with the growing hardware collection, became the starting point for the project.
founded with shuei-yuan yang in 2018, the misused operates in two parts: a research study treating hardware as a subject of anthropological material culture, and a design collection built from it. each piece follows the same three-stage process — identifying a piece of hardware, selecting a complementary material, and determining what homeware object it could justify — so that as little new material as possible is added to something already built to be durable. results include a jewel box made from butt hinges, a pepper mill from a door knob, a watering can from a handrail bracket, glass vases from drain covers, and a tape dispenser from a caster wheel, its rolling mechanism repurposed for a rolling gesture.
the collection was shown in three iterations, each responding to local hardware: the misused 1.0 in tainan, taiwan; the misused 2.0 at piet hein eek, eindhoven, during dutch design week 2019, drawing on hardware found in both taipei and the netherlands; and the misused 3.0 at coal drops yard, london, during the london design festival 2020, built entirely from british hardware — much of it defensive in character, from anti-skateboard fittings on benches to anti-climb collars on utility poles, which chen read as evidence of london's character as a dense, rule-bound melting pot.
the misused won dezeen's homeware design of the year in 2021, and its research phase later grew into the standalone project hardware archive.
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#1: stool made with hose clamp, 2018
#2: vase made with drain cover, 2018
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