cabinet on wheels by anna søgaard reflects on our daily needs and their importance

Cabinet on Wheels by Anna Søgaard

Anna Søgaard’s Cabinet on Wheels is a reflective exploration of our relationship with everyday items and their storage. Crafted from solid and laminated Douglas pine for the Mindcraft project, this cabinet draws inspiration from the robustness of storage containers and shipping crates while embodying simplicity in design and adaptability in function. Designed to be versatile in various living situations, the piece aims to challenge our culture of disposability by offering longevity. ‘There is a tactility and sense of exploration that you get from the cabinet when you use it as part of your everyday. It has a function, but it’s not any one specific function – I love this open nature and how it reacts differently to each individual,’ describes the designer.

an Adaptable Home Cabinet

Anna Søgaard, a product and furniture designer, embodies an open approach reflected in her creations. Her strong connection with wood drives an exploratory design process, focusing on minimalism and intuition. She emphasizes human interaction with daily objects, particularly through storage furniture, encouraging a dialogue between users and their belongings.‘I like to rethink the way in which we surround ourselves with objects in our daily lives. What do we need and why? A goal for my practice is to design objects that people value for their appearance, their function and can see the beauty in them,’ explains the designer.

Debuting from The Cabinet Makers Autumn Exhibition in 2022 (see more here), Anna Søgaard (more here) took inspiration from the shared workspace at Fabrikken’s artist and designer space in Amager. Observing creatives bringing items into the communal space daily, she envisioned this mobility in home settings. ‘The exhibition theme was factory, and to fit the theme, I looked at the inventory in the space and here I noticed that everything machines, storage units, and even the fridge had wheels or was placed on pallets and they do this to make it easy to move things around and change how the space is used.’ Thus, the designer opted to create the Cabinet on Wheels, offering internal storage and adjustability, all the while emphasizing its lasting quality. 

Crafted with materials sourced from Danish flooring company Dinesen, the cabinet’s exterior in solid douglas pine exudes a robust appearance when closed. Upon opening, the removable laminated douglas pine shelves reveal their playful texture while revealing the user’s personal items. This design invites reflection on essential daily items and consumption habits. ‘A large part of my process is based around playfulness and experimentation with size and format. It often involves elements that relate to each other either through logical and mathematical or in a functional order,’ she explains. Through this approach, I discovered that an aesthetic sense of calmness and harmony naturally emerge in both the design and function of the object. The format of the woods sets the foundation for the object and I spend a lot of time combining the right colour tone and grain direction for achieving the results that I want.’

image by Anders Sune Berg

portrait of Anna Søgaard, in front of her artwork | image © designboom

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project info:

name: Cabinet on Wheels

designers: Anna Søgaard | @soegaardanna

event: the Mindcraft Project 2023 | @mindcraftproject

materials | dimensions: douglas pine, laminated douglas pine board | 164 x 66 x 66 cm
year: 2022