1. Design a product for customization by both designers and users, allowing for maximum flexibility. The system must include manufacturing and logistics specifications, addressing sustainability and performance specifications.

2. Take this design/system and give it to other creatives to play and build with. Allow them to push the boundaries of the system and express themselves to their fullest. We believe this in turn will inspire the general population to use the system for their own visions.

3. Finally and most importantly; allow the final customization (regardless of designer) to be done by the buyer of the product. Allow them to decide the final expression or function of the product.

Platform design rose out of a dissatisfaction in the Ikea (and others) global phenomenon where you find the same Ikea furnishings and products in all of your friends homes. We want to see variety, not sameness. We want to help people go in a different direction than that of poor quality, poor ethics and homogenization of design. We want the world to be as unique as all the people and all the cultures in it.

You can find more info and discussion around platform design at platformdesign.org (we regularly contribute there)

It started with platform toys aka urban vinyl aka designer toys. I was first attracted to platform toys in 2002, while living in Tokyo I got wind of gajapon ガチャポン which are shops filled with small toys. These shops a found here and there around Tokyo with a concentration in Akihabara. Many of these shops also displayed and sold Be@rbrick. From then I was enamored by the basic shape and the different ways designers could express themselves with it.

I went back to these shops many times just to browse around, I bought very little. More just to look and listen and see what it was all about. Then maybe 9 months later back in Norway teaching masters degree class in Interactive design things became to clear up in my head. Many of the students were studying product design, so in many cases we did projects based on product design interactivity and interface.

At about the time I was moving to Tokyo I began discussing with the soon to be founder of Løvetann, a modular housing company. These discussions helped focus and ground the details of what this housing system should be, how it should function and most importantly how people should relate to it.

At this point the chair was well on it’s way in my head. But it wasn’t until 2006 (when I left Løvetann) that I seriously started to develop the chair concept. It was a simple idea to start with. Design a basic chair, so basic that other designers could change it’s shape, look and feel without the chair falling apart. Then show people how they can make it their own by putting it together in unique ways.

Originally I planned on designing a platform toy first, but it soon became clear that a chair was more substantial and interesting, so the toys will have to wait…

When working at Løvetann and during the start of the chair design development, I thought I was brilliant, that I had come up with this new concept for customization… It was a long was down form there on. Over the next 2 years I would learn that chair cut from single sheet of wood have been done many, many times. On top of that, mass customization has been a key subject (even the focus of a department) at Harvard since I was a teenager in the mid 80’s. There were more grey bearded pipe smoking professors and business consultants doing mass customization than all the people I’ve ever met in my life. The first times this happened, it was depressing, but I don’t mind anymore.

No product (to my knowledge) has approached design and mass customization from this point of view. Until now.

This is a public service announcement from the design heretics at MELD.

Going to China, especially these days comes with a price, the stigma that is connected with all that is cheap, low quality and unhealthy. These are big and difficult issue to try and overcome. I think if I had not been there several times and done a bit of business with Chinese companies (with both good and bad results) then I would yield to this propaganda.

The issue for me is location, I want this chair to be as environmental as is within my reach. This means I need to do the manufacturing close to where they make the bamboo plywood. The worst would be to ship bamboo from china, to Europe or America, then ship it again on delivery. The carbon footprint should be tiny.

So I’m off to Beijing to make the round and see if I can find an environmentally conscious manufacturing base. The travels will be chronicles here…

And now I’m here, MELD has been incorporated for some years and the results that will be displayed in London this September represents three years hard work. I’m very happy with the results so far, happy enough to now, finally share them with others. Coming up to the Launch of MELD this autumn bits and pieces will be shaved off and posted up here. Along with some of MELD’s other efforts.

MELD is a product development company, we’re in the business of mass customization by way of platform design. Platform design is the design method developed by myself to achieve mass customization in todays business environment. All of the products MELD creates will be via platform design, and I can say that we have several lined up for the near future.

The world is not ready for mass customization on a grand scale. Presented with the choice of ‘anything’, most people will be overwhelmed and simple draw a blank. To both educate and react to this reality, platform design give a basic starting point, a first step in moving to a mass customized world.

Nice to meet you,
Ken Olling

Founder/Designer
MELD