As the atmospheric environment is now on everyone’s agenda, a variety of products is being released to monitor air quality. It is said that the quality of the living environment is worsening as the indoor environment is more frequently isolated from outdoor environment due to pollution, insulation, and noise, causing a decrease in oxygen concentration indoors. Against this backdrop, our client commissioned us to design an oxygen generator that can create pleasant indoor space by directly inflowing oxygen.

Our main concern was to ‘articulate the image of pure oxygen more appropriately’. Most existing oxygen generators use an overly elaborate system to indicate the flow of oxygen which is not even visible to the naked eye. We questioned whether this ‘exaggeration’ is necessary to convey the essence of the oxygen generator. We then started to think about what might be the right design that focuses on the basic definition of an oxygen generator.

We thought an oxygen generator should be like oxygen which has a very low presence when one is not aware of it but it is definitely there once we pay more attention to it. By focusing on the following three keywords, ‘presence,’ ‘meaning,’ and ‘value,’ we refined the form and finally suggested a new design that never existed in the market, which is in harmony with the indoor space and visualization of the flow of oxygen by its unique breath-like movement.

It was not easy to mimic movement that looks like human breathing. Our client expressed difficulties in making a moving mechanism and we proposed solutions by making a variety of prototypes. By utilising fabric material, we were able to make the breath-like movement look more natural and the highest quality was reached throughout the pre mock-up process such as examination of the delivery structure and utilisation of light.