Dodeca
Nina Marie Malachin
Student
Nina Marie Malachin Academic staff
Camilo Ayala Garcia Klaus Hackl Ingrid Kofler Course
Products from Artefacts: Designing as Cultural Transmission. Dodeca is an interactive, multifunctional piece of furniture designed to challenge the static nature of traditional household objects and to encourage children’s independence. Blurring the lines between a stool, a step stool, and a container, it is designed to be moved, turned upside down, and actively used in everyday spaces.
On this side it works as a step ladder.
When you flip it around it turns into a two shelves container, able to carry small books and toys.
The rubber cord keeps the items inside when the object is turned upside down to be used as a step-stool.
It's built to instantly communicate its dual purpose as both a container and an accessible step-stool.
A project made in the course
Products from Artefacts: Designing as Cultural Transmission.
During the Summer Semester 2026, we have been exploring product design as a cultural practice, examining how artisanal knowledge embedded in historical artefacts has been transmitted across generations and apprehended through careful observation, making, and use. The studio course has combined research-driven inquiry, hands-on experimentation, and material engagement, enabling students to connect insights into the evolution of object typologies with their own design practice. Our main focus has been on vernacular artefacts—traditional household items, rustic furniture, farming tools, and details of rural architecture—as found in open-air museums and folk-art collections across our alpine region. Crafted for daily use, these examples of anonymous design—many of remarkable beauty, ingenuity, and longevity—bear traces of adaptation and refinement, shaped by scarcity of resources, local conditions, and pre-industrial craft traditions.
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