J39.5 is a series of chairs made up of reassembled parts of Borge Mogensen’s J39. While we were visiting a warehouse in Tokyo that dealt in vintage furniture, we came across a J39 that was missing one leg and had a cracked backrest. The chairs had apparently been damaged in transit from overseas, and repairing it was more costly, time-consuming and labour-intensive than usual. We decided to take the broken chairs back from the warehouse, as we felt that we could create new value for these chairs, which would probably be disposed off when the warehouse was reorganised. 

At first, we tried to restore the damaged parts using some kind of new material, but we thought that the adding new material would make them less original. In addition, it is well known that Mogensen himself redesigned the Shaker chair to create the J39, so we realized that our aim is to redesign the J39 using leftover parts rather than adding new materials. By dismantling, we were able to understand the characteristics of the individual parts, their finishes and fit-outs, at the same time, it is opening up a variety of possibilities. The dismantled parts were reassembled to create a new chair. The new chair is a significant departure from the original chair shape, but it was built using parts from J39. 

The chair, which had lost its functionality due to damaged parts, could not become J39, but with our design (+0.5), it was reborn as “J39.5”. J39.5 was the catalyst for the COMPASS project.

COMPASS PROJECT
COMPASS is a system to create a comprehensive and circular relationship with chairs (furniture) in which recycling, upcycling and reuse are not independent activities. 

The name COMPASS is a combination of the words ‘we’ (COM) and 'pass on to the next person' (PASS (REASE)) and is intended to encourage people to think not only about themselves but also about the next person, about the objects themselves and about our environment. 

This project is also based on the concern that the products produced may eventually be disposed of, which was felt while producing products using waste and scrap materials in their interior design project, such as recycling, upcycling and re-use. 

Chairs that are frayed or broken, or even can no longer be sat on/used are salvaged, and repaired or redesigned by AtMA inc. and then PASSed(REASE) on to next person to in the COMPASS circle. During the PASS (REASE) period, anything that breaks is repaired and redesigned each time and the COMPASS cycle keeps going round and round...