ARCHITECTURE IN YOUR HAND

AKO is the object practice of ALLEN KAUFMANN ARCHITEKTEN (AKA). We develop objects as small architecture: structure, material, assembly, proportion and use compressed into things that can be held, moved and lived with. We think of this as architecture in your hand — a direct way for more people to encounter architectural ideas in everyday life.

Over more than a decade, AKO has grown through making: first prototypes cut by hand in Berlin and Upstate New York; production tests in Germany, Portugal and Poland; material studies in aluminium, brass, heat-treated steel, wood, plastics and clay; and lamps, paintings, books and objects made simply to discover what a material, joint or process could do.

Many were never conceived as conventional products. Some are firsts, one-offs, mistakes that became something better or pieces that have lived with us for years.

We are opening part of this working archive because AKO is entering a more focused phase. We need physical and conceptual room to develop reproducible objects with our production partners, present coherent new collections in the showroom and create the photography, packaging and communication required to build a lasting object business.

The sale is also a public test: a way to learn what people respond to, introduce more people to AKO, generate income for the next prototypes and production runs and understand which ideas deserve to continue.

Each object carries part of that development history. Some have fixed prices. First prototypes, one-offs, paintings and pieces with particular personal value are offered on request because we may be willing to release them to the right person and place — but selling them is not simple.