Origami-Inspired Laundry Bag: A Blend of Functionality and Aesthetics

Katja Horst's Award-Winning Design Revolutionizes Laundry Storage

The laundry bag, a product of meticulous design and craftsmanship, stands out with its extensive pleating, achieved through a special cutting technique and sophisticated workmanship. The double-walled structure of the textile used, coupled with skillfully set seams, ensures the bag's firm upright stand, allowing users to fill it using both hands without it losing its form. This innovative design, devoid of the usual frame, has proven highly appealing, as reflected in its sales figures.

The production of the laundry bag involves the use of folded and sewed polyester fabric, a PP board to reinforce the bottom, and eight thin fiber sticks to support the shape. The bag comes in two sizes, with dimensions of 440 x 260 x 650 mm for the larger version and 390 x 190 x 485 mm for the medium version. This design, a result of careful consideration of consumer needs and production capabilities, represents a successful blend of form and function.

The laundry bag's design process started in June 2016 in Muenster, Germany, and concluded in August 2016 in Ningbo, China. The project's goal was to create a home product that was easy, clever, useful, and affordable, with a unique and unmistakable design. The result was a decorative, flexible shape that could fit into small rooms and corners, and a product that was easy to ship and store for retailers.

Overcoming production challenges was a significant part of the design process. Handling unusually large pieces of fabric, cutting the fabric, storing the cuts, and working with them on small sewing machine tables posed considerable difficulties. The team also had to figure out how to create exact and steady quality folds by hand. Despite these challenges, the final product boasts many elaborate design details, such as the way the front and back fall into multiple folds, the well-placed seams, and the special double-walled structure of the material used.

Horst's laundry bag design has been recognized for its excellence, winning the Golden A' Furniture Design Award in 2017. This prestigious award is granted to marvelous, outstanding, and trendsetting creations that advance art, science, design, and technology. The laundry bag, with its innovative aesthetic and functional design, certainly fits this description.