Design for sustainability - the memory drawers

Tejo Remy designed this chest of drawers in 1991 based on some pondering on how the human mind stores memories. He called it "you can't lay down your memory" and designed an extremely functional piece of furniture with - maybe unknowingly - quite an environmental impact. The drawers are all old and used but they are fit into a new housing. The housings are arranged in a stable but somewhat chaotic setup held together with a jute strap.

I believe that the metaphor of the system of the cognitive mind works pretty well. Basically the drawers we arrange our memories in have different ages, feel differently and are likely to vary in shape, size and color the same way as memories of a love affair will likely be kept in a nicer drawer than the recordings of an accident, a divorce or a lay-off.  We all build our lives based on what we find around us and how we deal with these findings, and the chest is setup in just the same way: the drawers are second hand and diverse/unpredictable but fit into a new housing to fit their new purpose. This makes every piece of this chest unique.  You can order them at www.droog.com.

No two pieces will be the same but I can imagine that the content of each drawers will be revealing some of the owner's feelings while the drawers will hint to possible mysteries hidden in them.

I cannot but wonder what job description they hired the drawer-picker with ...

Tejo Remy works as a product, interior and public space designer together with Rene Veenhuizen in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Considering everything as material, Remy incorporates existing information, circumstances, or found goods into new situations, often bringing in more social contact or, telling the story of a particular place. Remy transforms the familiar, yet the feeling remains.
His commissioners and exhibitors include Museum of Art and Design in New York, Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum in New York, MoMA in New York, Stedelijk Musuem in Amsterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, ACME Gallery in Los Angeles and the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment.

More on Tejo Remy can be found at www.remyveenhuizen.nl