Photo: National Museum of Contemporary History
We only seem to recognize what was ours once it’s already gone
The objects that shaped our everyday life have a way of staying with us long after they’re gone.
The things we used without thinking. The places we stopped without noticing.
We threw most of them away. Replaced them with something newer, something more modern.
But years later, we look at them with different eyes. We notice the quality of the making. The design that was ahead of its time. And mostly the memories. What we were doing. Who we were with. How life felt back then.
Nostalgia is a strange thing. It makes us cherish what we once ignored.
Photo: archive of MAO
Kiosk K67: The design we took for granted
The K67 kiosk is one of those objects. A small structure on a street corner that became so ordinary, so woven into the fabric of urban life, that we forgot to see it at all. Today, it has become a design icon.
Today, restored K67s appear in Berlin as street food spots, and on Times Square in New York. Specialist workshops now exist dedicated entirely to finding, restoring, and building new K67s.
Collectors travel across the Balkans searching for abandoned units and shipping them to buyers around the world.
In 1966, Saša Mächtig designed a modular system in reinforced fiberglass, rounded, clean, almost sculptural.
The inspiration came from something as simple as two pipes crossing in an installation. That intersection became the foundation for a design that would outlive the era that created it.
The K67 was brilliantly versatile. A single unit, a cockpit, could be a newspaper stand, where you could buy tobacco, magazines, newspapers, bus tokens, or it could become a flower vendor or a fast food stall.
It was mobile, multifunctional, and easy to maintain. You could wash it like a car, and any damage could be repaired because it was made of polyester.
Photo: archive of MAO
Production began at the Imgrad factory in Ljutomer in 1968. By the year 2000, over 7,500 units had been sold across Europe.
Designing for City Life
Saša Mächtig designed many other elements that became an integrated part of the city and shaped everyday life.
Bus shelters with a distinctive orange seat and curved roof. Telephone booths, those rectangular hoods where you stepped inside to make a call, feeding in a token and dialing a number you had memorized because you had no other choice.
EKOS recycling containers shaped like rounded capsules, making Yugoslavia ahead of most of Europe in public recycling. The summer terrace of Café Evropa in Ljubljana, with its glowing transparent polyester roof.
EKOS recycling containers
In 1975, Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) had already acquired the K67 for its permanent collection of 20th-century design. The curators were not thinking about politics. They were thinking about the design. And the design was extraordinary.
Then the 90's came. These objects were suddenly labeled relics. Old-fashioned. Embarrassing reminders of a past people wanted to leave behind.
K67 kiosks were abandoned in empty parking lots, slowly consumed by weeds. Telephone booths disappeared. Bus shelters were replaced with modern alternatives.
Saša Mächtig, the author of Kiosk K67, Photo: Delo newspaper, Jože Suhadolnik
In 2026 Saša Mächtig received the Prešeren Award, Slovenia’s highest cultural honor.
The man who designed the things we used to take for granted, the bus stop, the kiosk, the telephone booth, the recycling bin, is one of the great designers of the 20th century.
A tribute to design icon
We paid our own tribute to this icon of Yugoslav design with our Kiosk K67 poster.
On it, the kiosk stands by the shore of the Jadran. A scene many of us remember.
Summer in Yugoslavia. Jugoplastika sandals on your feet, a few dinars in your pocket, and a walk to the kiosk for an ice cream.
A small moment.
A memory of carefree days.
