We were working on one of life's most vexing problems: where to put your shoes. You can line them up like a baseboard of shoes, but good luck keeping that looking nice. You can have a shelf or hang them from the door, but that's a bit too prominent in any room. And where do you sit while you lace up?

We started with a simple goal to design an efficient, modular shoe storage solution that includes a place to sit. Quadrant takes the efficiency of the wedge shape and rolls your shoes up under a gravity-defying bench. You can extend the bench by placing multiple Quadrants next to each other so everyone can have their own cubby.

Design Team

Rich Moore

It seems like every home has a pile of shoes somewhere. We had designed custom, built-in solutions that we thought solved the problem nicely, but we couldn't find something that could go in every home. We had a very simple list of requirements: It had to use space efficiently, it had to be modular for different size families, and it had to have a place to sit while you put your shoes on.

Simple Geometry

We sketched out a lot of bad ideas. It kept getting too complicated, so we finally stripped it down to the simplest form: a box. We always appreciated the efficiency of the wedge shape for shoe storage, so we paired that with our love of simple geometry. We imagined something like an Ellsworth Kelley painting, where two sides of an elegant curve slide past each other as it opens.

Skateboards

One of the first problems we encountered was how to support the top when the box is open. The top was supposed to be a bench, but the walls that would normally support it had to be able to rotate freely. We tried placing a column in the middle of the box and made a slot in the dividers. It didn't work at all. Shoes got stuck…and it looked stupid. The solution was inspired by skateboard wheels (maybe because the curve reminded us of a ramp). We wound up using ball bearings that rode along the curve and transferred the load from the lid to the ground.

We made tons of prototypes testing different parts of the design and construction, and also testing the size. We started with a simple circular hole for the handle, but it didn't feel right. We made it a pill shape which fit the hand better, but, when the box is open, the hole doesn't work very well because it's flat against the floor. We decided to make the hole at an angle so there is a lip on the top to open it, and a lip on the bottom to close it.

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