Designer packing Tape

Packing tape has gotten MacGyver out of many a jam, but he never managed to make an entire home out of the stuff. So he could probably learn something from Viennese/Croatian design collective For Use/Numen. The team uses nothing but packing tape to create huge, self-supporting cocoons that visitors could climb inside and explore.

The installations, which look like the work of horrifyingly large arachnids, grew in scale and scope as the year progressed, first deployed inside a small Croatian gallery, then an abandoned attic during October’s Vienna Design Week.

At the last installation inside Odeon, a former stock exchange building in Vienna, the group used nearly 117, 000 feet and 100 pounds of tape. "The installation is based on an idea for a dance performance in which the form evolves from the movement of the dancers between the pillars, " explains For Use’s Christoph Katzler. "The dancers are stretching the tape while they move, so the resulting shape is a recording of the choreography." Watch below to see how it was done.

The installation’s over-the-top theatricality comes easily to the collective, who design sets as well as furniture for the likes of Moroso and Element. In September, they’ll create a tape installation in a public space in the center of Frankfurt, and a five-star design hotel on the Croatian coast is forthcoming.

• PVC packing Tape
• Patterned packing Tape
• Silent packing Tape