The latest edition of the Bread and Butter exhibition at 3 Days of Design, Perfect Pair in Bathing, saw designers create product duos related to bathing and sauna culture.
Curated by Hee Choi and Myungnyun Kim of design studio Ae Office together with designer Pyeori Jung, Bread and Butter took over a Copenhagen store space for the second year in a row.
While last year's exhibition looked at dining, this year the focus was on bathing, with designers from across the world creating products that reference their own bathing culture.
According to Choi, few things are as intimate as the act of bathing and this acknowledged with the exhibition.
"Bathing feels like a much more vulnerable and bare state, while still being both deeply private and strangely public at the same time," she told Dezeen.
"Bathing is something we do every day, but when you're completely bare, it can also become a moment when you really focus on yourself or take care of each other," Choi continued.
"At the same time, it's also a shared experience like Danish harbour bathing, Finnish saunas, Korean jjimjilbangs, or Japanese onsens."
Among the 16 participating designers were British designers Daniel Schofield and John Tree, Kasper Kyster from Denmark, Shizuka Tatsuno from Japan and Hun Lee from South Korea.
Each was asked to create a pair of objects that fit within a 40x40x40 centimetre cube.
"We also asked the designers to think about the colour and finish through the colour of 'water', whether that meant pale blue, deep navy, silver, white or something else," Choi said.
The resulting products – designed either as a pair of items or to be paired with something – vary wildly, creating an interesting insight into the cultural differences and similarities when it comes to baths and sauna culture.
"We wanted to bring together designers from different generations and cultural backgrounds," Choi said. "We also wanted to include designers who genuinely love bathing, or who come from cultures where bathing is deeply rooted in everyday life."
Products on show include Tatsuno's glass vessel, designed to be paired with local water, and Lee's Raindrop Tea Set, which the designer said was "inspired by the ritual of having tea after a bath on a rainy day".
Schofield, meanwhile, created a ceramic shelf-and-hook combo that could be used to hold a bar of soap and a towel.
The premise of designing bath-related products also had an impact on what materials the designers chose to work with.
"One thing we noticed immediately was how different materials were compared to the last edition, mostly because everything had to somehow resist or interact with water and heat," Choi said.
In addition, multiple designers created pieces that drew on their personal experiences and memories.
"Compared to last year's dining edition, works related to bathing felt much more private and personal," Choi said.
"Designers brought in memories of being washed by their mother as a child, now washing their own children, going to public baths with family on weekends or even small rituals like drinking a beer after a sauna," she continued.
"It was also interesting to see how many works dealt with the idea of care, caring for yourself or caring for others."
The resulting products, currently on show in Copenhagen as part of the 3 Days of Design festival, give an insight into our cultural differences and similarities.
For Choi, this was most clearly illuminated by Tree's design, a combined water stool and bucket.
"His project started from the observation that in many bathing spaces, a low stool is often accompanied by a container used to pour water either onto yourself or someone else," Choi explained.
"He created a pair where one works as a bathing stool, but when flipped over, it becomes a water bucket," she continued.
"As a Korean person, when I think of a water bucket for bathing, I immediately imagine a very low plastic scoop that almost looks like a mini salad bowl, so I probably would not have approached it in this way myself. That difference in perspective felt really interesting to me."
Also taking part in the exhibition are EOB, Giseok Kim, Large Medium Small, Maria Bruun, Rasmus Palmgren, Studio Word, Siin Siin, Tom Chung, Ville Kokkonen and Wataru Kumano.
Other exhibitions at 3 Days of Design focused on furniture made from electronic waste and futuristic 3D-printed cutlery.
The photography is courtesy of Bread and Butter.
Bread and Butter: Perfect Pair in Bathing is on show at Sankt Peders Stræde 35A, 1453 Copenhagen from 10 to 12 June during 3 Days of Design. Dezeen Events Guide offers a guide to the festival plus more events and shows around the world.