I like to imagine Mixko’s Alex Garnett slumped in his chair staring at his Pepsi soft drink, waiting for his digestive system to kick in and take on his high calorie lunch, when it hits him.

“I liked the way the bendy straw lent itself to be used in directing the lamp glow.” He later wrote about the lamp he created out of the soft drink cup (pictured above),” as a product it seemed very complete and yet all I had to do was tune my head into this way of recycling what already exists.”

He calls it the subversion of objects, that is, when you play with the perception of an existing product when you change it’s intended and ‘proper’ function while retaining the visual cues.

To elaborate, most people assume that the human eye is very much like a camera. The iris functions as an aperture, the retina as the film and the brain as the studio where the picture is analyzed and understood.

Yet whilst the camera will take in all that is ‘visible’ through the lens, in reality, the brain actually disposes of a lot of the data that it receives from the eye and instead completes the analysis or perception of what we see by using earlier experiences of familiar objects, which makes it all the more interesting when designers repurpose the ‘ordinary’, as in the case of the three we handpicked:

Who: Alex Garnett of Mixko Studios
What: Chair
From: 3 pin electric plug

Another one of Alex’s repurposed iconic object where he takes on the 3 pin electric plug and turns it into a chair. “Even the most bog-standard object can be made unique”, He adds.

Who: Ingo Maurer
What: Lighting.
From: Tea cup set.

This one’s by Ingo Maurer – A tea cup lamp that swivels 180 degrees and uses a spoon as a pull switch.

Who: Student Project at Eindhoven
What: Chandelier
From: Plastic clothes hangers.

And last but not the least, a student project at Eindhoven, for which students put together a chandelier with, believe it or not, nothing but plastic hangers. It’s almost like playing Magic Eye.

Only instead of pictures, you use objects.