EOOS: Designing Impact

This publication looks back on the last thirty years of EOOS and documents its evolution from a classic, internationally renowned design studio to an organization that redefi nes the role of design and strives to inspire upcoming generations of designers. In the early 2010s, EOOS closed a successful chapter of shop design for customers such as Adidas and Armani to instead focus on the global sanitation crisis affecting three billion people. The studio’s two main areas of work, internationally successful furniture design and social design geared towards social impact, might appear contradictory at first glance. However, on closer inspection, what emerges are a common attitude, an equal demand for quality and a fi eld of tension, traced here using numerous examples. Already fifty years ago, the polemical critic of the design discipline Victor Papanek demanded that designers in the Global North should devote at least ten percent of their work to the real problems affecting all people. The story of EOOS serves as an example of how this can be achieved successfully. EOOS is an international design studio from Vienna, founded in 1995 by Martin Bergmann, Gernot Bohmann and Harald Gründl with a focus on furniture design. EOOS has long-standing partnerships with clients such as Walter Knoll, Keilhauer and Carl Hansen & Søn. This portfolio is complemented by product design work for Alessi, Duravit and Zumtobel. In the fi eld of social design, partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Caritas, the Red Cross and other NGOs and foundations help EOOS to achieve its social goals through design.