With his new-age E.V.A. hanger (pictured after the jump), Korean designer Ha Jihoon addresses the perennial question, "where to toss the coat and keys after work?"

Entrepreneurs and innovation hopefuls have spent decades tackling this conundrum with electronic remotes, fluted coat racks, and the ever-ineffectual closet. Morning after morning we find our coats rumpled on a couch and our keys missing altogether. So maybe this is not the biggest problem the world ever faced, but it's one worth solving.




The simple, no-frills feature piece at Ha Jihoon's Solo Exhibition of Art & Design is the E.V.A. hanger, which resembles a space-age tree. Bundles of various sized, scooped rubber petals stacked around a retractable metal pole offer a convenient site to heave extraneous clothing, and other items like wallets and purses. A combination of aluminum and acethal, the E.V.A. pockets feel like packing foam. Lightweight and sturdy, this foyer furniture with attitude comes in a number of flashy colors -- green, orange, pink -- it's not a piece that blends. You'll buy the hanger foremost so your friends will comment on it and secondly because it serves a purpose. Although not visually offensive, the hanger isn't a 'just what I was looking for' item either.


Ha's hangers will capture audience and collector attentions, but some of his other designs are much more attractive.

As part of Ha's master plan "to destroy the boredom of space," he's designed Stelth chairs (an intentional misspelling of stealth) in black, grey, and metallic silver (lead picture). These futuristic-looking pieces are based on western concepts of design, but the material (beech) and finish are distinctly Korean. The slick Stelth chairs come in dining room and lounge size you'll have to already be working within a certain aesthetic to pull these off in your living room. Don't try to sneak the Stelth in next to your frayed second-hand futon.

Ha studied at the School of Design in Copenhagen but always incorporates traditional Korean elements in his furniture. Weaving, an essential aspect of Korean culture, appears throughout the exhibition in felt-woven benches, hand cut bamboo-woven chairs, and floor-mats, and Ha employed traditional Korean craftsmen to assist him in their production. Granted, as far as themes go, "East meets West" is encroaching on hackneyed but Ha melds the two with precision.

Ha's inexpensive materials and love of simplicity lend a certain democracy to design, a phenomenon not normally accessible to the proletariat. If fact, the only item on display that would break the bank are the Japanese-style lacquered plywood benches inlaid with natural scenes in Mother-of-Pearl.

Bund 18 has exclusive license to produce Ha Jihoon's designs and there is already a waiting list for the 200 USD E.V.A. hangers.

"Poetics of Simplicity," a design exhibition by Ha Jihoon, runs until June 30.

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