Why it belongs in ORBIS
Martin Fussenegger and Jochen Smuda founded Ucon Acrobatics in Berlin in 2001, starting with hand-printed T-shirts before shifting focus to minimalist rolltop backpacks; from 2016 the line moved to bags made from recycled PET.
Ucon Acrobatics began in Berlin in 2001, founded by Martin Fussenegger and Jochen Smuda, who converted a former cow shed into a creative studio. The brand's earliest products were T-shirts, hand-printed in a friend's basement and sold at skate events, before the founders pivoted toward bags as the company's core focus. Its rolltop backpacks and tote bags, kept to a restrained palette of black, grey and muted pastel tones, became the brand's signature design language, framed around resource-efficient, animal-material-free production. A significant shift came in 2016, when Ucon Acrobatics began using recycled PET bottles as a fabric source for its backpacks. More recently the company has expanded into recycled textiles and materials derived from fashion waste.