Io Loves Koko

a design house

In Greek myth, Io is a mortal who refuses Zeus' advances. Zeus, in anger, transforms Io into a cow and his jealous wife Hera torments her with a gadfly. 

Koko the gorilla was born at the San Francisco Zoo. The sole subject of an experiment in human communication, she spent years learning American Sign Language. She had a kitten that she named allball that was struck by a car.

An imagined love between Io and Koko inspires our work—a study in speaking with integrity in this impermanent, impure, semi-articulate life. Our projects draw from rhetoric, tango, and fashion design.

Rhetoric is the art of situated communication, tango an embodied act of coordinated improvisation, and fashion a diffuse collaboration. Each is a kind of know-how for wishful encounters.