Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna

Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna, as seen at Budapest Design Week 2024

According to our dictionary ‘Konyky’ is Ukrainian for ‘Grasshoppers’.

It might not be, our dictionary could be wrong. We suspect it is.

But if it is correct, it’s a curious name for Natalia Filonenko’s stool/table/pouffe for Kyiv based manufacturer Donna. Surely Lobzyk, jigsaw, or Holovolomka, jigsaw puzzle, make more sense. For that is essentially what Natalia has done, transformed a random piece of a jigsaw puzzle into stool/table/pouffe.

Or rather has transformed a random piece of a jigsaw puzzle into stool/table/pouffe, for Konyky’s form is very much that which bequeaths it its functionality. There is nothing random about it.

Although also nothing structured or systematic; rather Konyky is an object that can be freely used in a myriad ways: it can, for example be sat on as if it were a conventional chair with a backrest, that backrest can however be a front-rest or a surface for resting a mobile device on if you turn yourself through 180 degrees. Turn yourself through 90 degrees and its a side-rest. Or sit on the backrest/front-rest/side-rest and make it a raised seat. Or turn Konyky on its side and use as footstool or an occasional table or an aid for sitting low in the vicinity of the floor.

There may even be an option for perching if set to it’s full height, but that occurred to us far to late, and so we know no for certain.

But the options are certainly many.

And you can join them together, inter-link them, like a jigsaw. A linear jigsaw, admittedly.

Viewing them in 360 Design we thought you probably could inter-link them, and wanted to try, but thought we’d better not in case you couldn’t, which knowing our luck, you probably couldn’t; however, we’ve since seen photos of inter-linked Konyky on their sides, structures which provide all that the individual Konyky offer standing upright in a longer, curving, version. They could however, we presume, also be stacked vertically to create an impromptu work station, thus the sort of object that our post-desk (home-)office future will require.

Alternatively when not being used as a port for inter-linking, the circular opening at the bottom provides for the convenient, instantly accessible storage of, for example, a book or a magazine or a tablet, safely out of the way when not in use, or provides refuge for a pet cat, rabbit or wombat from the stresses of domestic life.

Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna, as seen at Budapest Design Week 2024

For all that Konyky unquestionably resemble objects crafted from 1960s Italian polyurethane, they are very much 2020s Ukrainian polyurethane and plywood and latex, or at least polyurethane, plywood and latex formed to Konyky in the Ukraine before being covered with a range of materials both of Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian origin.

Objects that provide a goodly degree of seating security and comfort, whereby in context of the latter the 40 cm sitting height is lower than a normal chair…. or at least lower than a normal adult chair; however, as an object for a child, a child’s bedroom, a playroom in an institution, a kindergarten its almost too easy an option. Not least because the variety of options of use, the lack of a clearly defined method of interaction, the invitation to explore the possibilities, can but stimulate a child’s imagination and fantasy.

If a 40 cm seating height that while lower than standard adult chair sitting heights doesn’t negate the use of Konyky in the adult world, as, for example, a bedroom stool, or a short-term seating option in a hall, as an occasional, temporary seat in a living room they also make perfect sense. Or in an office environment where the versatility in use, their ready mobility, the softness of their curves and lines and, one suspects, their acoustic effect, are exactly that which contemporary offices demand from their furniture.

And while, arguably, not the only representative of the genre of the multi-position sitting stool, Natalia’s Grasshoppers are a very satisfying, and playful, interpretation of that genre.

And should we work out the name, we’ll update accordingly.

Further information on Konyky, Natalia Filonenko and Donna can be found at https://donna-furniture.com

360 Design and Budapest Design Week have now ended. Further information on 360 Design can be found at https://360dbp.com, further information on Budapest Design Week at https://hfda.hu

Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna, as seen at Budapest Design Week 2024

Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna, as seen at Budapest Design Week 2024