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Jordi Iranzo offers a neat and stylish space-saving solution in cramped urban flats by moving storage units from the walls to the ceiling Jordi Iranzo’s Dalt is the closest you’ll get to making clutter vanish with the click of your fingers. Aimed at space-poor urbanites, the idea is to take advantage of the unused area above your head: a range of versatile storage units – a sack, two baskets and a clothes line – can be suspended from the ceiling using a pulley system that lets you lift them out of sight when they are no longer needed. The industrial designer, who studied at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, Germany, was driven to invent space-saving solutions after seeing images of shockingly cramped “shoebox” apartments in Hong Kong by the photographer Benny Lam. “I thought if the storage places on the walls were in the ceiling, they would have more space for living,” Iranzo says. Made in a combination of white steel, plastic and leather, Iranzo’s collection is simple and functional. It is also decorative, in that it makes a feature of possessions you might otherwise hide away. In Iranzo’s photographs, brightly coloured towels, groceries and stationery provide a cheerful contrast to the slim, simple lines of the baskets. He installed the system – which was awarded a design prize by the Ikea Foundation in 2015 – in the home that he shared with his girlfriend. “The room we shared had a little studio in it, so space was a problem. I used the Dalt basket to store tools and materials for my projects, which meant that we had much more room in our day-to-day life,” he says. He sees the design more as a concept than a finished product, so hopes to now develop the idea further. “There are a lot of things that I could rethink; for example, I could simplify the pulley mechanism and change the manual system to an automatic one – where you can lower or raise the baskets up to the ceiling with a switch. And of course I could think about other things to raise to give us more room – a garden or table? Ultimately, it would be great to divide one room into two layers.”
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Words Debika Ray |
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