For Toko Among Friends, design doesn’t just have a purpose – it has a personality, too.The desire to frame a space and elevate everyday moments is apparent in the system’s structural logic, balanced by a sense of play in its proportions and silhouette. This duality is captured in the system’s name – an expression of the shelves’ eagerness to engage with their surroundings and their owner – tempered by an ability to quietly hold space for the objects that matter most. Keen’s character emerges from the bottom up. Its oversized feet ensure the shelves’ stability while lifting the frame visually from the floor, bringing a sense of animation and architectural lightness to the overall composition. Imbuing designs with engaging human qualities helps establish an emotional connection with the user. With modular furniture such as Keen – which is designed to accompany its owner through many phases of life – emotional longevity becomes just as important as enduring functionality.

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Simple and intuitive expansion Where many modular systems have obvious connection mechanisms and an open-source feel, Keen has been carefully designed to appear whole and self-contained in all configurations – endlessly expandable yet always complete. The core components of the system are vertical metal rods, three lengths of open shelf, an enclosed box shelf, feet for the bottom, and soft arches at the top. The connectors enable the unit to be extended vertically by adding more rods and shelves, with each rod piercing the shelf above through a specially engineered connector bracket. Another rod is then connected to the bracket from the top, locking the shelf in place and allowing for the next layer to be added. Wall mounts can be added to ensure stability as the unit gets taller. For horizontal expansion, individual shelves can be easily replaced and repositioned in an interlocking pattern to create a stable, woven structure.

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