ARCHIVEIKEA Asks the Netherlands to Start a Better World at Home
How IKEA 's 'A Better World Starts at Home' Reframes Sustainability as a Household Choice IKEA's 'A...
Hornbach Turns a Japanese Architect's Vision Into a DIY Kit
Hornbach's "Documentation of Yo Shimada's Utsuri Table" is a 2019 German retail campaign, created by Heimat, in which Japanese architect Yo Shimada designed an original piece of furniture built entirely from standard DIY-store materials that consumers could order and construct themselves.
Released on January 9, 2019, as reported by page-online.de, the campaign is the second installment of Hornbach's ongoing WERKSTÜCK platform. Where conventional retail advertising promotes products already on shelves, the WERKSTÜCK series commissions internationally recognised designers to create original objects using only materials available in a Hornbach store. The resulting construction kits are then made available to the public, collapsing the distance between design culture and hardware retail. The Utsuri Table construction box became orderable through Hornbach's online shop in Germany on January 11, 2019, priced at €18, according to page-online.de. That box contained a construction book, a cutting template, an authenticity plaque, and a colour-card set — everything required, alongside Hornbach materials, to complete the table at home.
Heimat, the Berlin-based creative agency behind the WERKSTÜCK platform, characterised the project through Creative Director Marlon Fischer as "more a vision than a classic advertising campaign," as documented by wuv.de. That framing is accurate. The campaign's single film asset documents Shimada's creative process and the design logic behind the Utsuri Table, functioning less as a product advertisement and more as an authored piece of design journalism. For Hornbach, a retailer competing in Germany's densely contested Baumarkt sector, that distinction carries strategic weight. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 59/100, reflecting a concept with genuine creative ambition that operates at a deliberate remove from the conventions of retail promotion.
Hornbach operates in Germany's DIY and home-improvement retail sector — a competitive landscape in which brand differentiation is structurally difficult. The German market is dominated by large-format store operators, with OBI, Bauhaus, Hornbach, and Hagebau among the principal national and multinational competitors, according to eurodev.com. In this environment, price and range are the default axes of competition, and advertising tends to follow.
The WERKSTÜCK platform is Heimat's answer to that problem. By commissioning original design work and documenting the process as long-form film content, Hornbach shifts the conversation from what it sells to what its materials can become. The strategic insight is precise: a consumer who watches a Japanese architect build an elegant table from standard hardware store supplies does not see the materials as commodities. They see them as creative raw material. That perceptual shift is the campaign's primary commercial objective.
Hornbach operated 158 hardware stores across Europe at the time, according to selfstorming.com, and had established a meaningful online retail presence in Germany. The Utsuri Table construction kit was sold exclusively through Hornbach's online shop, a deliberate channel choice that positioned the WERKSTÜCK series as a complementary digital offer rather than a store promotion. As noted by eurodev.com, online retail was expanding as a complementary channel within the German DIY sector during this period, and Hornbach's approach aligned with that structural shift. Against competitors such as OBI and Bauhaus, which pursued more conventional promotional strategies in 2019, Hornbach used Heimat to build cultural equity rather than drive short-term transactional volume.
Yo Shimada founded Tato Architects in Kobe, Japan, bringing a design sensibility rooted in spatial precision and material economy to the WERKSTÜCK commission. The Utsuri Table takes its name and concept from a Japanese principle of reflection and transience — ideas that informed both the object's physical form and the film's documentary approach. That the table is constructed entirely from materials available in a standard DIY store is central to the creative proposition: Shimada's brief was not to design around premium materials but to find elegance within ordinary ones.
The production company credited for the film is BenteleBecker Bewegtbild, with Jan Hendrik Becker serving as director alongside Ulrich Bentele, as documented across the campaign's production record. Their approach is observational and unhurried. The film prioritises process over product — Shimada at work, the logic of the design unfolding, the table emerging from materials that a viewer could purchase the same afternoon. This is a production register more associated with architecture documentary than retail advertising, and that tonal decision is what gives the campaign its credibility.
Favorable coverage of the campaign appeared across a range of design and marketing publications. Horizont, PAGE Online, and Dezeen all published coverage in January 2019, according to Branding News, with Dezeen's inclusion in particular signalling that the campaign was received as legitimate design content rather than branded material. The WERKSTÜCK series had established this pattern with Edition 001 in 2018, which featured Danish architect Sigurd Larsen and a lounge chair construction kit, as reported by horizont.net. Edition 002 extended the concept by introducing an international design voice from outside the European context, adding geographic and cultural range to the platform.
The Hornbach Werkstück 002 campaign, of which the Utsuri Table documentation is the primary film asset, received a Silver award at the Cresta Awards 2020, according to cresta-awards.com. That recognition is the most substantive verified performance signal publicly available for this campaign. No verified sales data for the Utsuri Table construction kit, no documented reach or view metrics for the film, and no independent consumer research connected to this specific execution are publicly available.
Structural analysis supports the inference that the campaign performed its intended function. The film's placement in Dezeen, a publication that does not routinely cover retail advertising, confirms that the creative execution crossed from branded content into editorial design coverage — a distribution outcome that paid media cannot buy and that represents measurable earned reach. The €18 price point for the construction kit was low enough to function as a trial mechanism, reducing the barrier for consumers to engage physically with the Hornbach brand beyond a transactional store visit. The Silver Cresta recognition validates the campaign's standing among peers in the international advertising industry, and Heimat's positioning of the WERKSTÜCK platform as a long-running series rather than a one-off suggests that internal commercial indicators were sufficient to justify continuation. Edition 001 with Sigurd Larsen in 2018, followed by Edition 002 with Yo Shimada in 2019, demonstrates sustained institutional commitment to the platform.
The Utsuri Table campaign is Hornbach's Werkstück Edition 002, released in Germany in January 2019. Created by Heimat, it commissioned Japanese architect Yo Shimada to design a table built from standard DIY-store materials, then sold the construction kit through Hornbach's online shop for €18.
Yo Shimada designed the Utsuri Table. Shimada is the founder of Tato Architects, based in Kobe, Japan. He was commissioned by Hornbach and Heimat to create an original piece of furniture using only materials available in a standard Hornbach hardware store in Germany.
Heimat, a Berlin-based creative agency, created Werkstück Edition 002. Creative Director Marlon Fischer described the project as more a vision than a classic advertising campaign. The film was produced by BenteleBecker Bewegtbild, directed by Jan Hendrik Becker and Ulrich Bentele.
The Hornbach Werkstück 002 campaign won a Silver award at the Cresta Awards 2020, according to cresta-awards.com. That is the only verified award publicly documented for this campaign. The film also received editorial coverage from Dezeen and Horizont upon its January 2019 release in Germany.
Hornbach's Werkstück platform commissions internationally recognised designers to create original objects from standard DIY-store materials, then sells construction kits directly to consumers. Developed by Heimat, the series builds cultural equity rather than promoting existing stock, distinguishing Hornbach from competitors such as OBI and Bauhaus in Germany.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
