Cologne 2012: closing one drawer of Lee Sanghyeok's table causes another to shoot out at random. The project won second prize at the [D3] Contest at imm cologne this week.

Called Listen to Your Hands, the chest has multiple drawers connected by a central air chamber.

Closing a drawer quickly causes a sudden burst of air to force another drawer out elsewhere. The cabinet can only be completely closed by shutting each drawer in turn slowly and deliberately.

The project was first presented at Lee Sanghyeok's graduation from the Design Academy Eindhoven last year.

First prize at the [D3] Contest was awarded to Jólan van der Wiel for his machine that uses magnets to draw furniture out of a vat of liquid.

Photos and video are by Minseong Wang.

Here are some more details from Lee Sanghyeok:

Listen to your hands is about how we can make a relationship with inanimate things in our domestic space, like furniture. How we connect to the furniture around us, how we experience and communicate with it.

Listen to your hands looks at the most sensitive of human senses, touch; it communicates a whole world of information to us and it explores how we can create a relationship to an object, a sort of dialogue, through touch.

Listen to your hands is a desk with drawers. A push of one drawer pulls out another as if in direct conversation with the action. A gentle closing of a drawer keeps the others intact thus communicating to us that we need to act with intention, we need to listen with our hands.

Lee Sanghyeok creates furniture, objects and nice ideas.