The Problem. There was simply a need for a key storage solution. Although the technology offers alternative electronic opening options e.g. for cars, to this day still, people basically use metal keys. The main reason for a key storage is twofold: the multicity of keys and the avoidance of clutter. One tends to drop the keys as well as everything on the first horizontal surface after entering the flat. Anything that doesn’t get in place right away leads to chaos, and later searching for them causes unnecessary annoyance. What should be the storage? Do I need just simple hangers or a small piece of furniture instead? Clearly the latter, due to the number of keys to be stored. But why there are so many keys? If one starts counting thoroughly: apartment keys, car keys, keys for the bike rack, ski box keys, suitcases, and multiple copies of the above, plus keys for the apartments of relatives in case of emergency etc. This multicity must be stored in a systematic manner.

Research. I found no inspiration in the small number of local home decoration stores. When I designed this item, 21 years ago, I barely used the internet, or if so, not for that purpose. What I found were either individual or e.g. side-by-side triple hangers, rough metal boxes, and I remember only one ugly wooden box. None would have fit the design consistently applied in the apartment. Though I only looked at Hungarian ones, the key storage solutions were not in the focus of the home decoration magazines sponsored by dealers, since this is not a business compared to e.g. a bathroom or kitchen, obviously.

Design principles. Of the sustainable, environmentally friendly materials, I prefer wood. Of these, I chose beech. On the one hand, it belongs to the native tree species in Hungary, available in large quantities, it is renewable. It also fits into the context of a residential property, as beech has warm, lighter character, counteracts the white walls very well, and is easy to work with, yet durable. In my view, beech can be modern and still elegant at the same time. Ease of removal should be a design principle for wall furniture e.g. due to regular refreshing painting. Due to aesthetic principles, the top and bottom surfaces must be rounded. Opening with a protruding handle due to its higher position does not cause accidental injury. The item should be capable to store large amounts of keys.

Ideation. The size of the furniture was determined by the space physically available. It must have been in the hallway close to the front door but not right next to it. Placed between two rooms, the corpus could have been an upright rectangle only because of the amount of keys. The floor plan of the rooms of the apartment, the doors and windows are all rectangles, the colours of the wall and the tiles are bright due to increase the space, therefore I used bent surfaces and rounding for the furniture to solve this rigor. Thus, for consistency, the bottom and top panels are rounded to the same radius as other furniture. The two sides are also curved. Along the way, I came up with the idea to design lighting and lighting switching. Why? Because of two reasons. On the one hand, the top of the corridor runs along a sandblasted glass surfaced bookshelf with 6 lights; this needed a central switch at a normal, ergonomic height. On the other hand, I wanted a very low-consumption night light, because I only use plug-in night lights when travelling. These latter ones are not of high quality, durable solutions as home furnishings.

Prototype: in many cases making a prototype is to be considered especially if a furniture is complicated in terms of interfering functionalities. Here, it did not make sense, since it is a compact, small size item. It only would have resulted in more expensive process.

Product. There were some challenges and interesting solution in the final design. I pre-modelled the relative position of the hangers; there were 5 and 4 hangers in 6 rows, considering the typical space requirements of the key bunches, calculating the row spacing with shifting those. Cork has been applied to the inner bottom surface because the keys will inevitably fall off and quickly destroy the glossy lacquered beech surface. The frosted sandblasted glass on the inside makes the furniture airy, for me the solid wood would have been too much visually. The visible part of the door hinges and the handle are a kind of a matt chrome or stainless satin finish, with a drop shaped handle. It’s functional, and elegant. I applied it at other furniture because of the consistency of the style.

In the top of the ’key box’, there are 3 transparent leds in their socket emitting cool blue light. That was a real novelty back in the day. 21 years ago, led lighting was not typical in furniture, my idea came from audio design, from amplifiers built together with a friend of mine, we applied these leds for power switch, since these quickly became ‘sexy’ at a time when yellow, green and red leds were available only. These two lighting functions can be switched with handy height switches at the bottom of the furniture. The ’channel’ of the wires is etched into the furniture body, invisibly, then wires led in plastic channel through the wall to the transformer on the other side, since it could not be built into the corpus due to its size. The furniture can be hung off the wall when painting. After two decades of everyday use I still find it both functional with 27 key bunches and aesthetic.

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