Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger by Ivan Levak and Iva Grgic is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Bronze A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
BronzeFurniture· 2025
Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger
Client: Iva.n Design Studio
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #170531The Design
About Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger
The more items you hang on it, the more stable it gets; that is the main statement regarding this object. Coat hangers very often have stability issues; jackets, coats, sweaters etc. can lean the hanger. In Axel's case, while being designed, designers used gravity as an ally, to help its users to keep the tall hanger centered using its mid axis. Axel is a high quality product. Build by only two elements; a steel joint and a massive wood leg. Multiplied by three. Easy to repair since it's hand built.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Where to Get It
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Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to stability in Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger, where additional items enhance balance, challenges traditional design thinking - could you elaborate on how this gravity-centered concept evolved during your development process?
Ever since I watched Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar I became interested in gravity. And being a big fan of SF I always like to provoke an elegant dance between science and fiction, or we like to say 'fantasy'.Reducing the final form to it's constructive core, the metal joint that connects the wooden legs uses the negative space of a triangle. By that, all the items that are hanging on it somehow drop between the legs, Making the central axis more firm and stabile. With this feature, not only is the final product more visually reduced, but also more functional.
The nomadic lifestyle inspiration behind Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger reflects modern living patterns - how did your personal experiences with temporary furniture influence your decision to create a portable, high-quality piece that could become a permanent companion?
Living abroad, as an unpaid intern, buying designed furniture was a luxury I couldn't afford. So, ironically, I would take some Ikea pieces to build a home. But then, every time I would move to another city, all that furniture would stay... And making it financially unsustainable. At the end, an idea of a lightweight, easy to carry around, piece of furniture appeared. A design piece of furniture, made by high quality materials, easy to produce, with a price under 200EUR. And what better item would it be then the one that says 'welcome & goodbye' in your hallway or office.
Could you walk us through the precise engineering calculations that went into achieving the perfect balance between the 3mm steel joints and 4x2cm oak wood elements in Axel Self Standing Coat Hanger, particularly in relation to its impressive 15-item capacity?
The calculation was made by the traditional 'trails and errors'. We made a 1:1 modular model and play with the proportions and dimensions. We wanted to tall enough to hang a big winter coat by it's hood, which ended up to be 170 cm of height. Also, we didn't want it to be very wide at the bottom. That was a more complex task to solve. Finding the right balance between the angle of the legs with the floor and the wideness of the metal joints was the answer.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- 'The more items you hang on it, the more stable it gets' - is the main statement regarding this item. Coat hangers very often have stability issues; jackets, coats, sweaters etc. are leaning the hanger. In Axel's case, while designing, we used gravity as an ally - to help us keep the tall hanger centered using its mid axis. Axel is a high quality product. Made only by two elements; a steel joint and a massive wood leg. Multiplied by three. Easy to repair since it's hand built.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The hanger is 170 cm tall, and the base is 44cm wide, weights 4kg and comes in a flat box which is 173cm x 9cm x 4cm.
- Tags
- furniture, storage, hanger, wardrobe, clothes, interior, hallway, lobby
- Production Technology
- Made of 3mm steel and solid 4x2cm oak wood. Minimalized and reduced to be as light as possible, which makes it also very easy to handle and move it around the house. Axel has only two main elements that by multiplication, connected by 18 screws in total, becomes a heavy duty (15 items including coats, jackets, sweaters) holder. Very easy and quick to assemble by one person and a single #3 hex key.
- Design Challenge
- Regarding the challenges we faced while designing, the most complex was to find balance between solid stability and making the hanger as narrow as possible so it can easily fit into small hallways and rooms.
- Research
- Since both of us, Iva and I, have master degrees in industrial design, after a few sketches we started doing 1:1 models in wood, cardboard, metal and plywood. Everything we could find inside and around the house during the Pandemic. While doing the design index research, we come across that a lot of existing hangers have only three 'horns' to handle the load. And they are usually pointing towards the outer rim of the vertical composition... So we decided to turn these features the other way. Pointing the 'horns' towards the inside and using the central, metal construction for extra loading spaces (making hooks for coats in the process of CNC laser cutting). Also using the middle axis for better static stability.
- Inspiration
- While being a student and living a modern nomadic life, there were a lot of addresses. Constant moving from one apartment to another. A lot of temporary furniture, usually from Ikea, was left in those 'homes'. We all have our favorite piece of furniture that we love to take with us when moving to a new home. Axel represents a human size item that can easily be disassembled into a flat, narrow card box and easily carried away by hands or on a bicycle. A true piece of lightweight solid furniture.
- Project Duration
- The project started in Zagreb, during the Covid Era. First sketches were made in 2021 and the final prototype had a premiere in Milan during Salone Del Mobile 2023.
- Operation Flow
- This object can be operated by one or both hands. Once unboxed, the transformation from its flat pack 2D state to the final 3D composition can be easily done with 6 metal joints for the metal core and the additional6 screws to connect the central metal joint with the wooden legs. The interaction with this object isat least two times daily. Depending on how much its user takes on and off its wardrobe.
- Team Members
- Ivan Levak, Iva Grgic
- Image Credits
- Photo by Marija Gasparija
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