Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Charles O. Job achieved his degree in architecture and a master’s degree in urban design at Oxford Brookes University, followed by work experience in various architecture practices in Paris, London, and Zürich. Engaged in the fields of research, temporary architecture, and furniture design for international clients, a constant quest for simplicity is the common thread through his wide repertoire of projects and products. Charles has won numerous international design prizes and has a chair in the permanent collection of Vitra Design Museum. Charles has recently joined the SIT Awards Jury panel and is sharing with us his passion for “the art of making things.”
Could you tell us a little about yourself and your professional journey?
I studied Architecture and teach architecture, but my professional focus for the past decade has been product design. I was born in Lagos, Nigeria. I moved to the UK in my early teens.
Like all children of my generation, and most African children in general, I was always fascinated by the art of “making” things. As children, we “made” our own toys. We appropriated tin cans and embellished them with strings to make the ubiquitous telephone. We added wooden wheels to jerry cans and transformed them into rugged vehicles.
We were not poor. We were rich in ideas. I longed for an avenue to pursue this most satisfying part of my African childhood. I found it in design. I have my small studio in Zurich. My career started with my decision to participate in the 2002 edition of the Salone Satellite at the International Furniture Fair in Milan. I showed 5 prototypes and was awarded a Design Report Award for being one of the top three designers in the show.
Among other objects, I presented an early version of my vis-a-vis bench. The concept of two people seating on the same bench but facing each other was designed as a symbol of the reunification of East and West Germany in an international competition sponsored by the Deutsche Bank in 1999. The bench was spotted at the show by several producers and was eventually put into production by ABES. It has been in production ever since.
Taking part in the show launched my design career and strengthened my belief in the path I had taken to go independent and do my own thing, in my own way!
Vis-a-vis bench for ABES (abes-online.com) by Charles O. Job
Can you tell us more about your company “Charles Job Design & Architecture”, when did you open your own studio?
I teach architecture part-time and run a small trans-disciplinary design studio engaged in the fields of temporary architecture, product, furniture, and lighting design for international clients.
Both my academic and professional interests lie between theory and practice, between “thinking” and “doing”, exploring the innate interdependency of both thought and action as active and important elements of the creative process and a useful tool for solving real-life problems that affect real-life people. The products are archetypically simple, formally reduced and often humorous contemporary objects firmly rooted in every day since 2002.
I am interested in teaching, practice, and research. A research project charged with finding usable alternative building materials to wood and cement for the provision of affordable shelter in Northern and Eastern Nigeria bears testimony to this process. It resulted in tannin-bonded composite panels based on agricultural residues that would otherwise have been incinerated causing great ecological damage. The research team, led by myself, was awarded the Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction 2011, and the Gold Award at the Materialica Design & Technology Award 2012.
Apart from working, I am interested in exchanging ideas and connecting to an international network of designers and thinkers. This keeps my design practice competitive and informed. To achieve this goal, I take part in many open competitions and am invited to design Juries. I have served on various international design Juries, notably: the IF, Germany. Turkish Design, Istanbul, and both the D&AD and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize in London.
BUKAN for MOX (www.mox.ch) by charles O. Job
You have won numerous International Design Awards; what are your design principles and where do you find your inspiration?
I regularly participate in international design competitions. Many of these I could and did win, but most, of course, are “lost” to others with better ideas. Nevertheless, the lost competitions were themselves not without profit. Open competition on a given topic usually results in very many, very interesting solutions. The designer ponders and questions with pen and paper. Iterations of old ideas are forged and merged with developments of new possibilities. The result is always exhilarating. The new Idea must, in competition with others, be able to stand out and compete within this crowd. However, success depends not only on the quality of the idea per se but also on its convincing communication. As soon as an idea leaves the studio, the umbilical cord is severed, and the “child” is emancipated. It has to assert itself. It has to evoke emotions in others. It has to convince and be accepted. It does this with the passion imbued by the creator. The passion invested will, in the best case, be transferred to the user. It will evoke a desire to possess and cherish the object. It is this very passion that creates sustainable design. Products that will be cherished and passed on from generation to generation.
Picasso is quoted as having once said that he never looks for ideas, he finds them. The statement is not as pompous as it may first appear. It is an expression of the meekness to admit that we are influenced by anything and everything around us. Ideas are everywhere. We just need to be in a state of mind to receive them. My trusted sketchbook and my mobile phone are my constant companions. I record the ordinary, everyday objects analog and digital. I see the gems of ideas in materials, forms, colors, light, and shade. These recordings and annotations form themes, the backbone of any idea.
Since 2008, you have joined the University of Applied Sciences in Bern (Switzerland) as a Professor of Architectural Design Theory. What do you like most about teaching?
My design assignments are aimed at encouraging and allowing a vibrant exchange of ideas between faculty and the student body. I enjoy it most when students actively engage in dialogues with me and with one another. Each exercise is concluded with a review and a discourse that I compere. As a master of ceremony, I am in a position to guide the conversation that would include all the students, propagating their confidence in assuming a personal point of view. Creative sparks fly on such occasions!
ITO for MOX (www.mox.ch) by Charles O. Job
What do you think are the biggest challenges and opportunities in your career now?
My practice is strangely straddled between architecture and design. Consequently, I don’t really follow one particular market, so I am not in the best position to offer an accurate diagnosis. From my position as an observer, I think the topic of sustainable design will continue to challenge the market and hopefully drive innovation. A sensible and sensitive approach to design that acknowledges the finite quality of our resources and demands a reset on the themes of packaging, transportation, and circularity. My plywood Flat-pack chair “sketch” is a contribution to a possible future. A chair, made of one simple profile, transported flat-packed and easily assembled by the user.
What are you working on at the moment? Do you have any upcoming projects or collaborations that you’re able to tell us about?
I have recently joined forces with the “Africa by Design” platform. Initiated by Chrissa Amoah, the organization aims to promote African Design (www.africabydesign.org). As well as offering limited editions of products by African designers for sale online, AFRICA BY DESIGN dedicates its platform to exploring and exposing the best of the continent’s diverse design talents.
My plywood armchair “Sketch” was recently acquired by the permanent collection of Vitra Design Museum. I am now developing the chair with Das Konzept (www.daskonzept.ch). We are hoping to bring it onto the market next year.
Last, what is the advice you give to your students when finishing their Architecture degree?
SEQ for MOX (www.mox.ch) by Charles O. Job
Rozina started the Belgium Design Council in 2016 with a view to educating the value of Design Strategy and the value that design has to business, government, communities and our environments; with a mantra of ‘Excellence, Enterprise and Efficiency’ in its culture! She shares about her company Design2style, NGO BIDs Belgium and her other professional engagements.
Can you tell us more about your design company “Design2Style”? What is your focus?
When I started Design2Style, the focus was to get to know my ‘local’ market after working in an international corporate environment. For residential and business clients to give an experience of how interior design can change how we feel and behave in an environment, with conceptualizing and delivering mid-size corporate and residential renovations. Moving onto some branding projects. I stayed in touch with my hospitality network, which also helped. I worked on some exciting projects for corporate regional offices of the Finnish company Kone. Mixing the technology into the design. I had to know what made the CEO ‘tick’ and it was definitely technology and gadgets. This reminded me of Renzo Piano, with his book of Technology, Place and Architecture, which I bought many years ago, merging technology and intelligent building and product development together.
DESIGN2STYLE
I had a fun time experimenting with some set designs also. I was approached to present and design for a U.S. home renovation programme. This was quite a surreal experience yet gave some insights into what’s required for Television. I designed the home of a Canadian friend, who runs an Art Fair in Brussels and who happened to be selected coincidentally by the producers of the show.
TECHNOLOGY PLACE & ARCHITECTURE, THE RENZO PIANO LOGBOOK / GOOD DESIGN IS GOOD BUSINESS – IBM – THOMAS WATSON
The business model of D2S is all about working with other freelancers on a collaborative project-by-project basis. I have an excellent team of loyal contractors, I have been working with them for many years. I want to keep it small, I never had the ambition to grow to take on-premises with 20/30 staff. I knew I would move into other spheres of design and wanted that freedom to grow, whilst keeping it personal. Placing emphasis on open communication and transparency while providing excellent personal service is definitely a huge plus for the D2S brand.
You are the director of the Belgium Design Council (SME), and the NGO BIDs Belgium (New European Bauhaus community partner), what are the missions of these organizations?
I started the Belgium Design Council in 2016 with a view to educating the value of Design Strategy and the value that design has to business, government, communities, civic society organisations and across our environments. With a mantra of ‘Excellence, Enterprise and Efficiency’. At the intersection of Design, Creativity, Sustainability, Innovation, and Technology as key levers for change. Promoting circularity and sustainability with enabling design-led innovation from products, services, systems to cities.
Understanding that using design as a tool, we can go deeper and create some of that all-important systemic change needed and understand better the complex systems and mechanisms that are needed to create that change. Linking also design, organizations, processes, systems and our environments, ‘design is good business’ for people and the planet. I also looked at the various disciplines of design professionally over the years. Including interest in Inclusive Design. Looking at the practices and principles of inclusive design and admiring the work of Kat Holmes and the work of the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn Centre, where Rama Gheerawo is the Director.
Many of the official design organizations in Belgium, over previous years, in my opinion, were predominantly focused on the aesthetic aspects of design and were there to support and promote designers home and abroad. I had the ambition and vision of them working together to go beyond this. I had the will to extend the knowledge base and the ability to think about design in more systems and strategic applications.
I was also heavily influenced by the work of Bruce Mau and his work with Massive Change. As a student, I had the book S, M, L, XL wrote with his collaborator Rem Koolhaas. Then at a later stage, I was gifted ever stylish Life Style by my then boss. Mau somehow made it ok to be working and evolving across various spheres of design, whilst creating impact with a massive change in small steps. Recently launched his new book MC24 which was a welcome therapy during the pandemic period. I reached out, connected and exchanged with him during this period, conveying how much of a mentor he had been to me, without actually knowing it himself.
BRUCE MAU MC24 / CITY OF DESIGN KORTRIJK
When starting the BDC, I initially reached out to the politics and many of the public-funded design organizations to talk about the vision of the BDC and aspired to this being a collective as such and for it to be ‘everyone’s’ organization moving it from a small enterprise to non-profit organization. To share more of the design-led innovation aspect, for the business sector to the varying levels of government and community as a whole.
Yet, this collective vision was challenging and perhaps somewhat naive with the linguistic and regional divisions – the idea of having an organization with the word ‘Belgium’ as one county seemed rather political at that time, as I was told. Belgium and its regions have multiple levels of government and public bodies and this wasn’t always easy to navigate through the layers, to understand who is in charge of what in the creative, cultural and economic sectors. The publicly-funded design institutions were also reinventing themselves at the time when I started the BDC. Some had closed down, such as Design Flanders and were restructuring within other entities. They were re-aligning with their political objectives and expectations of their funding streams and dependent on the flexibility and boundaries of the political parties in charge for that term. In saying this, there has been a positive move for 3 of the many regional organizations to align with the ‘Belgium is Design’ collaboration.
The BDC is privately funded as an enterprise and it has brought opportunities and the freedom to design the projects we wish. The awareness of design and creativity, as a tool and process is certainly spoken about more in the broader sense locally now and also for a policy that is a positive move towards the future. Yet there is room for more alignment and more of an inclusive approach and being open beyond the usual design crowds.
Therefore, reinventing and evolving BDC to build up international collaborations and awareness is a huge plus. The BDC stays will continue to stay as an enterprise for the moment. Providing the service to help the transition to a more regenerative culture through redesigning systems and education. Also designing community projects on the philanthropic side. Continuing the awareness on design strategy, systems design and with some foresight. This approach also seeps into the sister organization of our NGO BIDs Belgium more often.
I was in Scotland recently and had the privilege to participate and contribute to the Design for Planet initiative by the Design Council in the UK, during the period of COP 26. The BDC was invited to attend the international roundtable of 20 international Design organizations from around the world to see how we could share and collaborate further. I attended their 2-day event at the V&A Design Museum in Dundee, which was excellent.
There is much work to do within the inclusion and diversity aspect, in a sector that is predominantly run by non-ethnically diverse people. I focus primarily on consultancy and community projects that with a focus around awareness of design-led innovation and educating on the inherent value of design. Collaborating in the past, with some international foundations as we did in Asia, promoting Women in Design for the Belgium Design Council. This has also been playing a big part in BIDs Belgium’s creation of projects around gender equality and inclusion.
The Belgium Design Council’s community interest also launched the NGO BIDs Belgium over time. BIDs Belgium was initially inspired by the Business Improvement Districts around the world, ‘BIDs’ as they are known. BIDs take a defined zone in an area and focus on economic regeneration, city/community and place branding. Partnering with BIDs in Scotland and connecting to many of the European BIDs, I took the holistic approach of using some of the regenerative Design-led innovation and place-led development, toward the community improvement approach of co-designing inclusive, sustainable, resilient and healthy communities.
Understanding on a deeper level, what this means and the interconnectivity and integrated approach we need to transform our cities and places to work towards the UN Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals. Working on some small local pilots, to international projects and advisory. BIDs Belgium is fortunate to be part of placemaking networks such as Placemaking Europe and the City Space Architecture.
It has been a privilege for my small NGO of BIDs Belgium, to become a community partner of the European Commission’s New European Bauhaus initiative. The initiative links to the European Green Deal; connects this to the spaces in which we live. Encouraging the exploration, experimentation and connecting with encouraging cross-sector collaboration, between the arts, culture, sciences and technology; fostering innovative collaborations and solutions that are inclusive, sustainable, and beautiful. There are now well over 300 diverse community partners. I had the pleasure to be on the Jury panel with others for the selection process of the recent New European Bauhaus Awards, in which some incredible projects and concepts won.
What do you think are the biggest challenges and opportunities in your career now?
I think the challenges I have faced are those that most women face in their careers. The balancing of work, life, and family, as working for oneself can also present major advantages and disadvantages. Yet I do believe the good definitely outweighs the negative for me.
As a woman of color, I am now more conscious of the discrimination in the industry than when I was younger and started out. I wish for this to change dramatically for the next generation. The industry needs to move forward and not only look at the inclusion of more female leaders, yet the intersectionality of women and the representation is crucial.
It’s not a world of equal opportunities and not as inclusive as it should be in the cultural, creative industry sectors. Hence I’m glad to continue working on projects that align with my core values of inclusivity and growing my work and services more internationally and align with those that have a shared vision of ‘together we are stronger’.
Continuing on the awareness of the role that design and creativity play for social cohesion within our diverse ever-changing cities is essential. The CCI (creative and cultural industries) and the individuals involved have an intrinsic value and opportunity, to solve some of our greatest societal challenges. Designers can help create a socio-economic positive impact, with some strategic thought and with some foresight. I’ll continue to raise my voice further on the Covid-19 period series of podcasts, with the initiative of ‘Design Conversations’ and the topic of Inclusion in the industry. I also collaborate with friends/colleagues of Alok b. Nandi and Lefteris Heretakis for our monthly session on ‘Let’s Amplify Design’ on Clubhouse. We discuss the various spectrums of design and the future of design education on the 18th of each month at 18hrs CET.
DESIGNING CONVERSATIONS PODCAST – ROZINA SPINNOY / LET’S AMPLIFY DESIGN – DESIGN EDUCATION TALKS
I believe design should be taught for its value as a trans-disciplinary evolving tool and for problem-solving for societal challenges – even across mainstream schools. Yet we have a long way to go for that challenge of re-designing and regenerating our design education! Initiatives such as the New European Bauhaus, can certainly help in that awareness and bring in new narratives around design and co-design. Whilst helping to evaluate the projects submitted for the NEB Awards, reading through the many projects gave me such incredible hope, with the impact many collectives and organizations that are pushing forward with implementing.
I enjoy sharing and talking about the many interests that stem from design knowledge and experience. Therefore, I will continue to my public speaking engagements at every opportunity. Topics around the many innovative and inspiring projects, initiatives and solutions that the creative thinkers and change-makers bring to the global challenges from health, education to co-designing inclusive and sustainable communities.
I hope to get more involved in the Education sector with having enjoyed the many invitations from Educational institutions as a visiting ‘Professor’ and Expert. From the British Council to Kayseri University in Turkey to the Faculty of Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia and sharing some participative co-design thoughts on the art of democracy with the youth. To also contribute, sharing and exchanging with students and professors on the role of technology and design at Bolzano University, Italy.
I also have had the pleasure of connecting more to my roots in Scotland with sharing, exchanging, and working more there prior to the Covid-19 period. In February of 2020, I was invited to do a workshop by the Academy of Urbanism. I had been nominated as an Academician and helped co-organize a Futures workshop in the University of Dundee, with its stunning V&A museum and is a UNESCO Creative City. There are opportunities to work on more sessions with AoU on the feminist cities aspect, which I hope to engage further in soon.
V&A DUNDEE (Images Rozina Spinnoy)
I hope to continue to build on the relationships and work with the many I have encountered over the last years. Also, I’m hoping to continue to share and advise and further develop the corporate, business and NGO sectors on their business transformations and innovation processes, with a system and regenerative design focus.
The role and opportunities that we as designers and creatives, have to learn from the past in order to co-design our futures and to learn and enrich our very beings from the indigenous cultures around the world, is immense. I have an opportunity to use my voice, my creativity, my humanity, to continue to leverage my experience and network, to empower diverse women, girls and those that are vulnerable in our society and are often left behind, and continue to disperse some of my knowledge, while learning from others. There is so much work to do, so let’s start looking forward with hope, courage and co-creation with and for our next generation of aspiring Designers, Architects, Urbanists and Creatives.
What are you working on at the moment, and do you have any upcoming projects that you’re able to tell us about?
The projects I am currently working on have given me many reflective moments and brought certain moments and emotions of my past into future projects. Perhaps it’s middle age, who knows?
I’m working on designing programme of inclusive events for an initiative of ‘Empowering Women’ sessions. I started this collective of Empowering Women and Public Spaces during the Covid-19 period and launched it on International Women’s Day in March this year. This had a focus on awareness on designing safer public spaces across our communities. Yet whilst doing this, it was a focus on teaching women and girls self-defense.
I used to practice Karate and even competed at a professional level, regionally and nationally. I won gold and silver at the Scottish Karate Championships in the late ’90s. During this time I recall my thesis for my final year at university, being heavily influenced by Japanese culture and architecture. It was during this period I became rather obsessed with light and space and the works of Tadao Ando, whom I admire greatly.
TADAO ANDO – CHURCH OF LIGHT AND ARMANI TEATRO
I haven’t been in the Church of Light, yet I remember being in awe visiting the Armani Store for an event during the Milan Furniture store Ando designed.
For my thesis, I chose an old Church on the Southside of Glasgow and wanted to convert it into a multifunctional martial arts center for the young and old. I link this phase emotionally to an early influence of the play between light, shadow and architecture. Being a young girl and playing in the shadows of the brutalist architecture buildings of the synonymous Queen Elizabeth Square social housing apartments in the Gorbals in Glasgow. My Father had his business in this location during the 1970s.
I remember the concrete pillars and the long external corridors of these Le Corbusier-inspired buildings. I recently came into contact with the Irish community that knew my Father and were residents in these apartments before they were knocked down in the late ’90s. I got to know an Architect, Author and playwright who also said these light and shadows play of the structure paved his way into creativity subconsciously.
Back to the future, with this initiative of Empowering Women & Public, I connected with inspiring diverse women from Northern America, South East Asia and Europe to collaborate and create collective awareness and local actions in our respective areas. Knowing we could use public space and private space to practice. The debate knowing that ultimately women should not have to change or adapt their behaviors in public space, it’s our sons and men that require education on this. Yet we know that women for women do not design most of our cities and most women get harassed. I have been harassed and also physically when I studied abroad. Luckily, I was prepared and went into automatic self-defense mode and protected myself.
As well as the public spaces initiative, I’ve also started an Empowering Women and Climate Change initiative. I’m collaborating with a friend and colleague in the urbanism/architectural world based in Italy of City Space Architecture. We recently co-organized a session for the Innovate4Cities global conference, which was co-organized by the Global Covenant for Mayors for Climate Change and UN-Habitat. We dipped into our global network and had some incredible women attending from Brazil, India, Pakistan, Italy, Finland and Sweden.
EMPOWERING WOMEN & CLIMATE CHANGE / EMPOWERING WOMEN & PUBLIC SPACES TALKS (BIDs Belgium)
I’ve also recently finished a 3-year project collaboration with a European consortium for the JPI Urban Europe project of Placecity with Oslo and Vienna. We are hoping to continue this collaboration and have recently had a follow-up project session this month. In November, it was also COP 26, the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow. I had the pleasure to visit the public zone conferences and attend some side events, making new connections along the way. There is plenty on the horizon, including further public speaking engagements with The International Sports and Culture Association in Brussels and our BIDs partner, Scotland Towns Partnership.
Last, what are your passions outside of the design world?
Finding out what makes our people and planet ‘tick’ is a passion, with observing, listening, and feeling, with the good and not so good. Design is my passion and I don’t see the work I do, as work and I’m very lucky for that! My family outside of the design world is an instinctive passion. I have 3 incredible teenage sons for which I’m blessed and whom I’m very proud.
With keeping to the home environment, I absolutely adore gardening and it’s also a passion. Nature itself is the greatest design of all. I continue to take photos of the natural elements in my garden and relish them on a daily basis. The simple pleasure I get from planting a seed and to see this grow into the most stunning exotic flower or the flower into a vegetable is just so simple, yet immensely rewarding. I have also been dabbling in landscape gardening. I know I’m not alone in that, as the surge of people enjoying gardening and experimenting has grown over the pandemic period.
GARDEN & FAMILY
The idea to source and grow locally reminds us of the communities around the world that we must learn from. The many diverse and indigenous communities have lived sustainably, well before we even became so aware of the word and talk about in a global way are now. Yet we cannot design solutions unless we also redesign our global economies and acknowledge that climate justice is very much linked to social justice, equity, and racial justice, with the Global North/South divide. The activist in me only grows in middle age!
I often think I’d like to ‘design’ my own farm one day and continue to grow my own vegetables, watching the shadows and lights of the seasons change! The healing power from nature for our mental well-being is neuro-scientifically proven and it definitely benefits our busy lifestyles.
This also links to my middle son, who has mental health challenges, and my continued passion to drive and to create more awareness on mental health and the challenges associated there. Despite having more awareness on the topic over the years, we still have a long way to go in breaking taboos and designing accessible support systems at a local level. My list could go on as I have many passions, as I’m sure you have gathered!
Thank you for reading about my journey in the ‘diversity of design’ in my career. I hope sharing my story is of some value to students and those starting out their careers in design. Showing the value and power the creative brain and design has to make positive change across lives and create a positive impact for our beautiful planet.
It’s never too late to start your journey in the diversity of design!
This interview has been written by Rozina Spinnoy, Founder and director of the Belgium Design Council.
Rozina Spinnoy was born in Scotland and living in Brussels for the last 20 years. She holds a BSc(Hons) in Interior Design/Architecture from Glasgow Caledonian University and TEI Heraklion, Crete. She is the Founder & Director of Design2Style, Managing Director Belgium Design Council (SME), and NGO BIDs Belgium (New European Bauhaus community partner). Based in Brussels and working locally and internationally, Rozina is an experienced professional, with a career spanning nearly 25 years. Rozina is sharing with us her professional journey through art & design as well as her personal engagement towards children education and women.
Could you tell us a little about yourself and your professional journey?
I am from Glasgow, Scotland, with a South Asian heritage and I’ve been living in Brussels over the last 20 years. Working as a Design Strategist and Social Entrepreneur on purposeful projects that I’m passionate about, with my finger in a variety of pots.
My career has evolved continually around the various disciplines of design from the practice, the process to strategy over the last 25 years. I initially studied and graduated with a BSc (Hons) Interior Design/Architecture in Glasgow.
Growing up in Glasgow, it had a vibrant social scene and the friendly city certainly gave a core interest in creativity with Design, Culture, and Cities. I have fond memories of the City and growing up in this fashion and design-conscious cultural hub. The City has a rich heritage of Victorian and Art Nouveau Architecture. European Art Nouveau movements influenced Glasgow Architect, designer, and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh working alongside his wife Margaret MacDonald, with the stunning Glasgow Art School to the beautiful Hill House and House of an Art Lover. Sadly the Art School burned down twice in recent years and I hope this gets restored to its full glory once again…
House of an Art Lover, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh Chairs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh
The narrative of the industrial shipbuilding heritage of the city has also changed significantly, especially after the nomination as the European City of Cultural over 30 years ago, which I remember well. Brussels will be entering the nominations for 2030 and I hope the City wins this. This can create the same memories of a home city for my own children, as it did for me.
I studied Interior Architecture/Design, a carefully considered conscious decision as a mature student in my early 20’s. I went to Glasgow Caledonian University for 5 years to study a science-based honors bachelor’s. It gave an excellent grounding from the business, theory, and practice. The opportunity and experience to study Architecture in Greece at the Technological Educational Institute Iraklion, in Crete, was invaluable during this period. All thanks to the Erasmus exchange program!
My first experience of working was in my late teens, when I fell into working in the finance sector full time and Accountancy and Tax for three years and then Stockbroking. I didn’t know which direction to go for further education and decided to take some time out. I knew whatever I was to study, would eventually be connected to creative sectors in some way.
I’m the youngest of 7 children and have brothers that had an interest in all genres of music, society, and culture. I was lucky to have been exposed to this at an early age and went to many exhibitions and concerts. I remember going through the album and CD covers from Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Beatles, Led Zepplin to Miles Davis. Being continually fascinated by all the Artwork and colorful illustrations.
My parents emigrated to Scotland in 1958; my Late Mother had attention to detail and in particular Asian materials, which was almost an obsession. . I used to go clothes shopping every weekend with her to the many exotic and intricately embroidered materials in the clothes stores in Glasgow Southside.
I went to the City of Lahore and also walked along the road to Amritsar at the border to India and other places in Pakistan in late 2019, it was a feast for the senses. To see the grand historic Islamic architecture steeped in history. The smells and sounds of the food, the hustle and bustle of the markets in the city to local craftsmanship of the wood carpenters in the villages, and the hospitality, have also impacted me greatly.
The City of Lahore is approximately the size of the country of Belgium in terms of population at just under 12 million people. Amritsar is more the population size of Brussels and Dehli incredibly nearly 19 million. The scale of the challenges, of such megacities as Lahore, Dehli, and many others, in terms of climate change and education in sustainability at ground level, is immense and quite overwhelming.
Leaving the ornate architecture within the touristic center, towards the roads filled with rivers of plastic really brought home the scale of the challenges the global South encounters.
I also visited the regional government in charge of urban development projects. It was also inspiring to see the sustainable projects and drive towards some of the co-designing of places for projects they were working on. There are many inspiring projects and initiatives from India, Pakistan and South Asia as a whole. Especially from the young dynamic entrepreneurs and change-makers. It would be good to hear and read more about these initiatives in the West.
Lahore – Historic Buildings (photos by Rozina Spinnoy)
Designing, co-designing, collaborating and researching on topics and projects that align with my own values is important to me. With a focus on designing inclusive environments and processes supporting that. Whilst looking at how we can evolve together in creating sustainable and healthy communities. Along the way using foresight and systems thinking approach, connecting the dots and working transversally.
Since starting my businesses over 10 years ago, I have aligned myself with working on designing projects around the topics of inclusion, urban design and place-making, gender equality, and women empowerment, with also advocating about more mental health awareness.
I’ve been very lucky with having a varied career path from working in finance, corporate hospitality from the late ’90s in marketing, brand, and design roles, to starting my own SME and NGO over this last decade.
Not long after graduating, I fell into corporate hospitality. A leading Boutique hotel UK-based brand, Malmaison Hotels, working within its headquarters in Glasgow. The brand was the vision of the Glasgow hotelier Ken McCulloch, who had an eye for detail.
Designed by his wife, acclaimed Scottish Interior Designer, Amanda Rosa. The strong focus is on converting architectural heritage buildings of interest with that brand. I looked to the hospitality industry and trends of design from some of the interiors of the on-trend bar, nightclub, and restaurant designs of entrepreneurs such as Colin Barr. I admired the works of Graven Images and know the Designer, Jim Hamilton. The Head of Design at the then College of Building and Printing that I attended before I went on to University, had also taught Jim prior to me. Jim and Graven were then to come back in my professional life at a later stage, in the hospitality industry. I still stay in touch with him from afar after all of these years.
I transferred with my work and moved to Brussels, after the acquisition of Malmaison Hotels. Working in a variety of roles from regional PR and marketing, to covering the EMEA region with brands and concept development and hotel design, working for the multi-brand hotel operator Carlson Rezidor. It was an excellent experience in the global world of hospitality design that also seemed friendly and intimate, with the then family-like atmosphere that the previous CEO encouraged.
Malmaison Hotel Glasgow (Former Greek Church)
Further exposure to the global design world really took off with attending the Salon del Mobile in Milan regularly. Along with attending the various furniture fairs from Paris to London and beyond. I connected to many wonderful designers and had a few star-struck moments. Meeting Karim Rashid, whilst he was a DJ at a Boutique hospitality fair in London and also in Dubai, or seeing Philippe Starck from afar. I listened intently to the ‘king’ of hospitality, Ian Schrager at a design conference I attended in London. Sharing his story from the iconic Studio 54 and his collaboration with Starck for the Royalton in New York, which I recall visiting in New York in the mid-1990s.
There were many big-name designers that were collaborating and diversifying with other sectors and brands. The hospitality sector was no exception, such as the collaboration with the Italian fashion house Missoni. Missoni Hotels had opened in Edinburgh then Kuwait, under the iconic eye of Creative Director Rosita Missoni and Italian Designer Matteo Thun. The longevity of the hotel side of the fashion brand was not there, unfortunately. Yet exciting times at the point of my leaving work in the corporate hospitality sector.
I had taken a career sabbatical for one year after my 3rd child was born and eventually took the leap to leave the corporate world. I also choose to spend more time raising a young family and getting to know my ‘local’ market by starting my own business Design2Style.
Missoni Hotel – Graven Images
I left this phase of my corporate life after several years pretty exhausted, to then eventually start out on my own. This was the start of taking a different direction and also diversifying. My career moved in a variety of disciplines of design, gradually understanding the business of design as an entrepreneur. Delving deeper not only in the aesthetics, form and function aspects, yet also the processes of design.
Axel Vervoordt (image from www.axel-vervoordt.com)
As a designer and entrepreneur, I educated myself further with the Belgian design scene at that stage of leaving corporate life. Knowing the history of Antwerp as the fashion capital steeped in the reputation of the Antwerp Six. Appreciating the understated minimalist elegance of world-renowned Axel Vervoodt, with a slight enigmatic mystery. Working in the international environment hadn’t always given rise to the opportunities to explore and delve deeper into three Regional differences of the design organizations, yet the opportunity arose at this point for me.
I’ve always immersed myself in books as many do and in 2010, just I was leaving the corporate world I bought the ‘Design in Belgium’ book. It had given a comprehensive rundown of the design retail, to hotels and museums to see. Still linking to hospitality, I was a keen admirer of designers such as Michel Penneman. With his innate individual style, he brought to the boutique hotel scene of Brussels, such as the Vintage Hotel. I recall fondly the Summer opening of the Pantone Hotel, launched by the brand itself. This hotel was designed by Penneman and I felt the nostalgia and parallels of years gone by in Glasgow. The possibilities to be in purposefully ‘designed’ places encouraged the new boutique-style concept and Brussels vibe.
Design in Belgium Book – Pantone Hotel by Michel Penneman – Vernon Pantone Visiting the Interior Kortrijk in 1974 – Pantone Hotel by Michel Penneman
Having worked in a global corporate environment, I used to fear my professional world and network could not extend when starting out on my own. I couldn’t have been more wrong in that. I have grown spiritually, personally and my network has grown exponentially, in ways I would never have imagined initially. I’d say that’s thanks to many experiences, the love of networking, and listening to people and their stories. I also attribute this to the core design education of the arts and sciences based education all those years ago. I have had the freedom to ‘explore’ other fields of design and sectors whilst mixing the business and brands. Developing and pushing my own boundaries and going out of my ‘comfort’ zones’ has given me much confidence, critical thought, and reflection. I feel very privileged for that.
Alain Gilles for Fratelli Rossetti – Diane Steverlynck
When did your “entrepreneur “life in Design start?
I’ve always been around entrepreneurs growing up. My parents came from South Asia and came to Scotland in 1958 and my late Father was an entrepreneur right from the start. Therefore, it was only natural and it was in my DNA to be an entrepreneur in some ways.
When I started out as an entrepreneur officially in 2010, it felt like the ultimate freedom. Executing my dreams of starting my own business and designing all aspects from a blank canvas. Having the ability to be a ‘problem solver’ for others. To enhance and improve all environments no matter the client. To create a positive impact with good design and showcase how it can change and be an added value in so many ways, was imperative for me. No matter how small or big a project.
Going back the basics of the Design Education I mentioned earlier played an important role. From the concept development to learning how to budget with the basics of mathematics and understanding why the fire regulations mattered. At that time, it also included the digital dimension with learning the CAD – computer-aided design. I do recall initially going to see clients with my huge portfolio case, which I’m sure I still have in the cellar somewhere! This of course gradually reduced in size from A1 to A3, to then to eventually transferring my portfolio of work to an iPad. What a difference that digital transformation made to life of a Designer!
Starting out with Design2Style, as a small business, which was an easy transition. It was ideal with also having a young family of 3 children, having the balance of working from home. My experience over the previous years helped within the different aspects of developing a business and brand. The professionalism and service aspect to clients was incredibly important from the start. Developing the brand, social media, business development, marketing, and client base was important. Every experience from finance to design is important. The ‘global’ mindset and most importantly how relationships and networks matter. Having the ‘anything is possible’ mindset with being flexible, adapting to new situations and ultimately having the all-important ’empathy’ and listening ear with clients. At times I also felt like a therapist, as there are definitely the elements of that psychology in design, in more ways than one.
Over the last years, my business and I evolved. I moved from the design of interiors to the strategy of design and what that means. What would it mean to ‘co-design communities and educate the value of design as a strategy? Around 2016/17 I started Belgium Design Council and soon after launched my NGO, BIDs Belgium.
You have founded and co-founded several initiatives, including inclusive education programs; can you share with us your engagement towards children education and women?
My children and their creativity inspired my engagements towards education and in particular inclusive education. Observing over the years the inherent creativity that young children possess in primary school. To then how in secondary school the pressure of exams, tests and pressure at young age detracts from that creativity. This instigated a number of connections within childhood education. From the Lego Foundation’s Play Futures community, which I had the pleasure to be invited to join close to the start and connect to the global community. Also closer to home here in Brussels, an initiative of a local Foundation, which would hold several meetings at the European Parliament, where the intimate group would listen to experts linking creativity and education over recent years.
In 2017, I co-designed an inclusive Education programme, inspired by my middle son who has an intellectual disability and a variety of challenges including mental health. It’s called Analogue to Digital and it’s a programme of workshops linking social impact and STEAM. The term STEAM originated from Rhode Island School of Design, bringing Arts into the Science, Technology and Manufacturing education.
It has a variety of programmes for Teach the Teacher, ‘Espace Kalm’ that plays on mixing French/Dutch words for Space and calm. Equating to Calm Space and the need for this in our busy lives and countering the technology influence in our lifestyles, with the basic of hands-on creativity.
Analogue to digital by BIDs Belgium (Images of Rozina Spinnoy)
The Analogue to Digital workshops are incredibly rewarding. The pilot was with two amazing schools that in 2017 included a Dutch-speaking school in my own district. Eventually, they went for EU funding to open a STEAM lab and confirmed that our workshops validated the direction they wished to take. Encouraging an experimental, critical thinking approach and future-proofing the youth with exposing them to 3D printing and digital aspects, as well creativity such as clay-making.
There has been mentoring of youth in Slovenia with a lab for a European project, local workshops for kids from a variety of backgrounds and countries for a summer school on encouraging kids to design a local pedestrianized street. Analogue to Digital has its own separate site yet comes under the BIDs Belgium NGO.
My involvement over the years in women’s issues has become stronger as the years go on. Being a woman of color, breaking cultural and religious norms, feeling very grateful for having a voice, an education and a healthy family.
I’m striving to continually better myself through opportunities that I make and that are enabled through the environment and experiences around me. Having had influences of strong women around me, from my 2 elder sisters to admiring female Architects and Designers. I greatly admired the late Zaha Hadid. I recall going to see her talk in Glasgow during my university years at the Glasgow Film Theatre and being mesmerized by her presence and ability to have made in a predominantly male-dominated industry, whilst being a woman from another origin.
Zaha Hadid Riverside Museum Glasgow
Her futuristic architecture with simple curves and organic shapes showed me she had no fear and just went on to define her iconic style of architecture. I was so upset when she passed. I’m still waiting for such a diverse female ‘starchitect’ to emerge and be acknowledged in the way she was in the architecture and design world.
As a Mother myself, appreciating the journey of my Late Mother, also had a profound impact on me. Yet she had this sense of beauty with her personal belongings, from the jewelry and to clothing. Being fashion-forward with her material collection and keeping up with the trends. Her and my Father’s profound sense of giving back to family and the extended community with their hospitality, I’m sure had a subconscious influence on me growing up.
These and other experiences, observations and facts, I take with a kind of humility from being Scottish with the South Asian origins. Overcoming social stigmas, cultural and religious norms and expectations, having the mix of East meets West made me truly appreciate my journey of life and route that has the richness of the design and cultures with the Asian, UK and European continental mix.
I’m part of a collective of amazing women from an inspiring initiative of Women 100/ W100. We have a mission of breaking down the silos and of women building bridges across the Brussels Region. We co-designed and realized our first event in 2019 after a year of regular meetings. Bringing together 100 diverse women who were active during Covid-19. It was a truly humbling experience.
W100 Photography Exhibition
This interview has been written by Rozina Spinnoy, Founder and director of the Belgium Design Council.
Unlike home furniture, hospitality furniture is known for its ability to withstand wear and tear from continuous use over long periods of time. To meet commercial-grade standards, it must first pass stability, durability, and weight testing.
Hospitality furniture is also made to be easily maintained and to last a long time. Many major hospitality brands will require hotel owners to upgrade their hotel furniture every 8-10 years. These four companies are worth noting for their exemplary interior design strategies for the hospitality-built environment. The following are the winners in the past SIT Furniture Design Award for 2020.
The primary design requirement was to create a hotel with a local flavor, handcrafted and custom-designed, with distinct spaces that represent Barcelona’s lifestyle and architecture, an artsy neighborhood with a young soul and an old body. As a result, various and distinct spaces within the Hotel invite both guests and locals to stay, enjoy, meet, and interact. They all reflect the local way of life, with a chic and joyful atmosphere that is both unforcedly elegant and genuine.
The design incorporates beautifully crafted elements, local brands and art, colorful ceramic patterns, and reinterpreted historical references, all while incorporating a contemporary spontaneous design approach that gives Vividora Hotel a distinct, energetic personality.
The majority of the furniture elements and finishes are from local brands, giving the design a local flair while also supporting the local economy. Last but not least, we were able to avoid long transports while also contributing to the conservation of our planet.
Prize: Winner in Hotel Design
Company/Firm: EL EQUIPO CREATIVO
Designer: EL EQUIPO CREATIVO
Lead Designer(Other): Kimpton + IHG Design Teams
The restaurant is inspired by the client’s professional and personal environment. The client is a supplier of a well-known tequila brand that also has a personal connection to Mexico. When you first walk into the restaurant, it appears to be a little more private and cozier, but as you walk down the street, the room opens up towards the outside space and the kitchen. We used a pedestal and wooden arches to create different atmospheres within the room. The southwest-facing patio is separated from the streetscape by an untreated sheet pile wall.
The bar counters frame a large red skull, the restaurant’s signature eyecatcher. The orbital cavities of the skull are filled with bottle racks, resulting in a spectacularly illuminated scene. The teeth are represented by lighted wine glasses on the back counter. The bar counters vary in height, resulting in a flexible counter landscape with varying levels of quality of stay.
Prize: Winner in Restaurant Design
Company/Firm: Mark Studios
Designer: MARK Studios team
Lead Designer (Other): Carpenter: Teissl & Mark
Other Credit: Furniture & Interior: MARK Einrichten
The design concept is based on the Chinese Creation Myth, which shows the creation of Heaven and Earth by the god Pangu. The restaurant showcases the concept of family roots and values passed down to future generations through story-telling.
Through reinterpreting the concept of story-telling in a modern progressive way, lead interior designer Aedas aimed to create a hidden world for guests to explore within this historical landmark.
Prize: Winner in Restaurant Design
Company/Firm: Aedas Interiors Pte Ltd
Designer: Aedas Interiors Pte Ltd
Lead Designer(Other): Simon Thompson, Ji An, Teresa Evangelista
The Capsule Hotel and Bookstore in Village Qinglongwu is situated in the deep forests of Tonglu, Zhejiang province. It was an old house with a wood structure and mud walls, with a floor area of 232 square meters and a height of 7.2 meters. Atelier Tao+C redesigned and revitalized this historic structure by incorporating a capsule hotel with a capacity of 20 people, a community bookstore, and a library.
To keep the building’s original simplicity, the architects used restrained openings on the exterior wall. The original floors and partition walls were removed, allowing the ground floor to be used as a library and two independent “floating” structures above the open spaces to be used separately for male and female guests. Each of the male and female “buildings” has ten capsule rooms and a bathroom. The modular capsule rooms are hidden and surrounded by bookshelves, giving the accommodation area more privacy.
Prize: Winner in Hotel Design
Company/Firm: Atelier Tao+C
Designer: Atelier Tao+C
Location: Qinglongwu
Your sofa is the most used and, hopefully, most loved piece of furniture in your home. And, as any interior designer will tell you if you want to quickly update your living room, a new and stylish sofa can completely transform the space. In this sense, a well-designed sofa provides numerous options for free and flexible configurations. Different components allow for the composition to be changed over time, actively inviting users to unwind and rearrange them. There are some sofa designs that can provide a sense of openness that inspires and sparks creativity.
The following designs have won the prestigious SIT Furniture Design Awards.
The Pebble Bench is an unforgettable work of art inspired by nature’s finest curves and is designed to provide maximum comfort while reconnecting people with nature in indoor spaces. Pebble Bench is made of eco-friendly materials like recycled plastic, steel, and aluminum. There are no two Pebble Benches that are the same; the possibilities are endless. Each Pebble Bench is handcrafted with distinct color patterns and shapes derived from natural pebbles. By adding more “pebbles,” users can customize their benches.
Prize: Winner in Bench
Designer: Will(Penglin) Jiang
School: Syracuse University
Karim Rashid’s design language of fluid organic forms is exemplified by the Chelsea collection. More than just an aesthetic choice, Karim’s removal of hard surfaces and sharp edges creates visual and tactile comfort as well as an arresting sense of calm, qualities the designer believes are essential in the compact-living settings that inspired Chelsea.
The Chelsea sofa and chair are made with cold-cure foam over a steel frame and high-quality springs, resulting in precise 360-modeling, zero foam sagging, and exceptional comfort. The lightweight design floats on a black wooden plinth, creating the illusion of levitation. The collection includes a sofa, chair, coffee table, pendant light, and floor lamp. Karim utilizes a design ethos he refers to as ‘Sensual Minimalism,’ which is very simple, reductive, and minimal. But not in the way we think of minimalism: hard-edged forms, a square, a cylinder. Chelsea is concerned with the human body.
Prize: Winner in couch & sofa
Company/Firm: Karim Rashid Inc.
Designer: Karim Rashid
Other Credit: BoConcept, Denmark
The design firm Wid Chapman Architects created the sofa as part of a 3,000-square-foot Manhattan apartment renovation. WCA created a sculptural division between the two rooms because the client did not want a conventional wall separating the Primary Bedroom from the Living Room. To enter the Primary Bedroom, one “navigates” around this geometric, Venetian-plastered form. Simultaneously, the form creates a cocooning shape in both plan and section in the Living Room, which houses the 17′ long custom sofa.
The sofa is conceived to have an integrated chaise component on the right end. At the other end there is a smaller, protruding seating element that allows for social interaction both facing the sofa and facing the adjacent window seats- which in turn have breathtaking views over Central Park.
Prize: Winner in couch & sofa
Company/Firm: Wid Chapman Architects
Designer: Wid Chapman Architects
Other Credit: Fabrication Dune-NYC
Furniture is regarded as the focal point of any establishment, such as a home, office, or commercial space. Furniture, in a broad sense, refers to movable objects that support various human activities, such as holding objects at a convenient height and storing items. In a modern workplace setting, furniture plays an important role in the ambiance of the workplace, providing a safe and relaxing atmosphere as well as a comfortable feeling to all office occupants.
The significance of office furniture extends beyond mere comfort. The role of furniture in worker productivity and workplace efficiency is more extensive than we might think. The following designers have designed the perfect home office furniture and bagged the SIT Furniture Awards for 2020.
The desire to have a home office integrated into the living room, avoiding the annoyance of an untidy desk and the constant reminder of work to be done, inspired this furniture. The design brief specifies a high-end home office that is both comfortable and functional while working and easily stored afterward. The product can be produced in series and does not take up a lot of space.
Both working and living conditions are improved by the use of technology. It functions as a fully functional office desk in your living room during the day. When the workday is finished, the office can easily be converted into a nice sideboard, restoring the homey atmosphere.
To use, manually open the sideboard’s middle door. After lifting the lower panel, the other plates fit into a small groove on each side of the door. When the door is open, it quickly locks. A magnet on the two front panels holds the small lid in place. By pressing the up/down button, two electrical actuators are activated either using the button or the application available. Adjust the height of the table to your preferred sitting and working position.
SecretAir – The discrete home office sideboard
Prize: Innovation of the Year
Company/Firm & Designer: Myny
Lead Designer(Other): Woodwork tips & tricks: Philipp von Hase, Fredrik Bostad: render setup
Other Credits: Strength calculation: Magnus Rogne Myklebost
Resilience, privacy, and wellness are all important factors in achieving a sense of well-being in your personal space. Because of the collaboration with Benchmark and the use of sustainable, non-toxic materials and finishes, Rockwell Group’s collection is optimized for the workplace but would also look great in a hospitality or residential setting. Using biophilic design as a starting point, the collection includes adaptable pieces, many of which transform to accommodate multiple functions with the touch of a button or the toss of a pillow.
These soft, supple, and supportive seating and tables have natural wood finishes and upholstery materials sourced from sustainable sources. The pieces are made of ash and sycamore wood, with blackened finished copper accent detailing and natural upholstery layers of coconut fiber, natural latex, recycled shredded denim, and lamb’s wool.
Inspired by the classic drafting desk, the Sit-Stand Workbench and Desk offers a modern solution for flexible work surfaces.
Sage by David Rockwell for Benchmark
Prize: Winner in Others home office
Company/Firm: Rockwell Group
Designer: David Rockwell
Lead Designer(Other): Barry Richards and Shunyi Wu
Albasa is a versatile desk and shelving system with unique features that allow users to work from home professionally and confidently.
A retractable backdrop blind and ring lamp ensure that users appear professional during video calls. The desk can be converted into space-saving shelving when not in use. The blind is held up my arms and fits snugly into the frame. To provide a clean backdrop for video calls, it can be rotated out and dragged down behind the user. To make the backdrop stand out, logos or graphics can be printed on it.
The built-in ring lamp gives the user’s face a flattering glow, ensuring that they always look their best on camera. You can adjust the height of your screens and cameras with modular shelves. These features allow users to maintain a professional demeanor no matter what their surroundings are.
Albasa is capable of transforming into a set of shelves. With a single motion, the frame slides up on rails and locks into place. Albasa occupies one-third of the floor space in this position while remaining functional. While the shelves and mirror can be used as a vanity, and the screen can be pulled down to hide clutter, it can also be used as a projector screen or lamp.
Prize: Honorable Mention
Company/Firm: Albasa Design.
Designer: Lachlan Fahy
Location: Japan
Eco-renaissance – As we’ve all become more conscious of our planet, a product’s life cycle, and our role in the process, the design world has unavoidably shifted toward sustainable production and design. We could say that we’re in the midst of an eco-renaissance, with increased supply chain transparency as well as local and ethical sourcing. Thus, it brings us the increased popularity in the use of upcycled parts and natural materials.
High-concept furniture designers, in particular, are getting in on the act, inventing new ways to create products that are not only good for the environment but also look great. Upcycling ocean plastic and rethinking post-consumer waste are two of the most popular ways that these innovative thinkers are embracing sustainability and enabling a more circular economy. Unfortunately, the majority of these pieces are currently made to order and require a significant investment.
Of course, the ultimate goal is to live in a world where responsive design is the norm rather than the exception. The following are companies and their products that are taking upcycling to the next level.
Each oak barrel tells its own story where it is handmade and refined in the best wineries to perfection. The design breathes new life into age-old oak barrels. They are carefully prepared and processed into unique barrels, tables, and wooden works in expert hands. We combine Swiss craftsmanship with modern design and sustainable upcycling. Each piece of furniture gets its own personality and becomes a unique piece handcrafted to our customer’s wishes.
The Maximus is aesthetically elegant, where the dining table has symmetrically arranged barrel staves and is framed in solid oak. With its striking feature, it can easily fill every dining room with true elegance.
Maximus is made from barrel staves of 3 used red wine burgundy barrels from the regional winery Davaz in Graubünden, Switzerland. The barrel staves are framed in solid Swiss oak wood. The spaces between are filled with epoxy resin in black, and the table legs, modeled on the shape of the barrel stave, are handmade of solid steel. The entire dining table is designed and handcrafted in Switzerland.
Old oak barrels have great potential for furniture design. Their shape and design radiate something venerable that should be preserved. For us, every barrel is full of possibilities and inspiration. It offers room forever new creations and ideas. Together with high-quality solid wood, the barrel becomes an innovative combination of classic craftsmanship and modern design. The results are works which we always develop in close collaboration with our customers.
Prize: Winner in Dining Table
Company/Firm: Fasswerk Hämmerle
Designer: Remo Hämmerle
Location: Blumenfeldstrasse 22, 9403 Goldach, Switzerland
Borne from the dreams and needs as designers aspire to make the world a better place. There is an urgent need to reduce the burden on our home planet to keep the Earth clean and green for our children.
The upcycled chairs carry the new environmental philosophy. In this day and age of resource depletion, recycling and upcycling have become the norm. We discovered valuable raw materials among the industrial waste that is routinely disposed of in landfills.
These were upcycled heavy-duty cardboard rolls that were originally used to transport steel roof sheets. The rolls are given new life in Uprolls’ design and production facility, where they are transformed into chairs, poufs, tables, lamps, pet furniture, and other items. Furthermore, the fabrics used in production are sourced from waste materials from the furniture industry, from which we select high-quality textiles.
Uprolls help to save material and energy that would otherwise be used to manufacture elements for similar products. Additionally, the upcycling process lowers industrial waste disposal costs.
Prize Winner in Armchair
Company/Firm: Leonardo Disain Oü
Designer: Leonardo Meigas
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
What is the SIT Design Award?
The SIT Furniture Design Award TM was created to recognize and share the outstanding work of furniture designers and those who incorporate furniture into their projects. The creativity, innovative vision, and accessibility in the furniture design community are celebrated and widely shared around the world.
The SIT Furniture Design Award is a program of the 3C Awards, a global organization that curates and promotes design. The company exemplifies today’s diversity and innovation in Lighting Design, Furniture Design, Interior Design, and Architecture. Each brand is a global symbol of design excellence, showcasing the work of Professional and Emerging designers to a jury of over 100 experts.
Born in Perth Australia, Rob Curedale worked as a designer, director, and educator in design offices in London, Sydney, Switzerland, Portugal, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Detroit, and Hong Kong and taught at design schools in those and other places. Now the President of the Design Community College Los Angeles, Rob is sharing his passion for design and community.
Could you tell us a little about yourself and your professional journey?
I lived in Canberra as a young child as my father had gone there to manage the finances of the city. Canberra is a modernist planned city that was constructed like Brasilia as the National Capital in Australia following an international competition for urban design in the early 20th Century that was won by Walter Burley Griffin who was Frank Lloyd Wrights’s junior partner in Chicago. I didn’t know what an unusual designed environment that city was as a child because I had experienced no other place.
My father had a collection of books that included some books on anthropology and archaeology. I was fascinated by images of exotic clothing and artifacts taken in traditional societies during the early 20th century. After I studied design I saw that ethnology, anthropology, and design are closely connected expressions of human culture.
In Canberra when I was about 17 years old, I was fortunate to meet two people who had extensive international experience practicing design and architecture. They influenced me to study architecture and then design. Both of them were extraordinarily skilled at drawing.
Roger Kirk Hayes Johnson was an architect, planner, potter, painter, sculptor, writer, and educator. After architectural studies in the United Kingdom, He was flying an Avenger fighter in 1944 when he was shot down off Dieppe attacking a convoy of German E-boats. His crew did not survive and was in the water for 24 hours before being picked up by a E-boat and to Stalag Luft III in Poland where he remained a prisoner of war until 20 May 1945 when the Russians released him.
After the war, he practiced architecture and teaching in Kenya working for the great Weimer Modernist architect Ernst May, South Africa, Burma, England, and finally Australia where he was the First Assistant Commissioner of the National Capital Development Commission. Several key Canberra landmark buildings including the National Gallery of Australia and the School of Music begun construction during Johnson’s time at the commission.
The second person was Fitzpatrick an industrial designer whose career began with his work at the Danish design firm Bernadotte Bjorn run by the brother-in-law of the King of Denmark. There he designed glassware, photographic equipment, and furniture.
He worked as a professor at Art Center College of Design Pasadena for many years and he was Professor Emeritus at College for Creative Studies in Detroit after serving for six years as Chairman of Transportation Design. He worked in design consultancies and car design studios in Melbourne, UK, Denmark, Germany, and New York and taught for many years at the Rhode Island School of Design.
After four years of studying architecture and design at what is now the University of Canberra. I won a national competition for the design of a system of airport seating and moved to Sydney to work for the company Sebel that had sponsored the competition. Later I continued graduate and other studies in Australia, the US, and some classes through the Domus Academy in Milan. In London, I completed one year of a degree in illustration at Chelsea College of Art and Design.
My first job in London was working for a company owned by Jeannette Constable Maxwell. Jeannette was an associate of John Getty 1st and his grandson John Getty 3rd. I was the only designer working there and over four years and dozens of projects built a design office. I managed the design, contract manufacturing, and installation of an extensive range of urban furniture in Abu Dhabi including bus shelters, seating, signage, postboxes and other such things in a project worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The bus shelters are still in use. “The project included signage for the AbuDhabi Airport. Building a design office was a large learning curve for me as a young man.”
After four years in London, I moved back to Sydney to manage the Australian Design Awards scheme for the Design Council. Prince Philip at one time traveled to Australia each year to present Awards managed by the Design Council, the Prince Philip Prize in a nationally televised ceremony. I would organize panels each day consisting of designers, engineers, advertising and marketing experts, human factors specialists, and others and chair the panels which lasted half a day assessing each product. We would travel to regional cities once each year to give design feedback to manufacturers. Through the Design Council, I met a wide variety of designers and manufacturers such as Gordon Andrews who had worked for Olivetti in Europe designing their showroom interiors.
For four years in Sydney, I worked as a designer and project manager for a design consultancy called KWA in an old industrial building overlooking a Gothic church. There I designed a great variety of electronic equipment furniture and other products. I worked on a number of musical synthesizers for Kim Ryrie and his company called Fairlight. His synthesizers were the first that used sampling. Musicians including Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Duran Duran, John Lennon, and Peter Gabriel used Fairlight Synthesizers then because they were the most advanced available. I recall meeting Kim just after he had returned from meeting John Lennon in his apartment in New York or Steve Jobs in his office in Cupertino and he would tell me about his experiences.
I set up my own office in Balmain which I managed for ten years while completing a Masters’s degree. We employed Marc Newson’s company to design the interior of our office which we shared with a corporate graphic design company.
My team designed urban furniture for the 2000 Olympics, furniture, a great variety of electronic equipment and medical equipment, and diving equipment for the Japanese company Apollo. We designed a laptop for Canon and medical equipment that has been used in thousands of hospitals around the world. Some of our projects are now in the collection of the Powerhouse Design Museum in Sydney. I employed many great designers there including Chris Stringer. During his 22 years later at Apple Chris contributed to the design of the PowerBook, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple Watch, Apple Pencil, HomePod, USB-C. at Apple. A couple of our designers had come from Philippe Stark’s office in Paris.
Bus Shelters for Adshel and the City of Sydney developed with the Adshel team. Part of a range of street furniture developed for the city of Sydney preparing for the Sydney Olympics since then installed in other cities.
Over the years I have worked on many hundreds of projects. In these projects I was responsible for a design, initially designing, engineering and supervising manufacture myself and eventually managing design with hundreds of people collaborating on a project. Teams on the largest projects included designers, human factors specialists, color and materials specialists, packaging designers, web designers, exhibit designers, business managers, marketing teams, engineers, manufacturers, and others. On some projects, the teams were dispersed in several countries and files were moved at the end of the day to the next design offices in another time zone where it was morning so the work could continue 24 hours a day and the current iteration of the design was moving around the world with people working on it 24 hours a day.
The first project of about a dozen seating projects that I worked on at my first job, Sebel was the design of the first one-piece polypropylene chair in the world, the Sebel Integra. Polypropelene now is one of the most common materials used for chairs. At that time there had been some fiberglass and ABS chairs manufactured in Europe but those materials were unsuitable for the Australian climate where they would become brittle and shatter within six months in the desert locations.
The Integra chair is still in manufacture after several decades. The chairs have been manufactured in six countries in volumes of tens of millions and reaching greater volumes than the population of Australia at that time. It was the largest injection molding tool that had been constructed in Australia. I worked in Sydney designing high-volume lighting for the Dutch company Philips and later moved to London which was then where designers in Australia went to expand their experience and education.
I have continued to work on furniture products in every conceivable material since then. Later I was the design director of a company called DTank in LA and design manager at Haworth in Michigan then the second-largest furniture company in the world.
Office System for RTKL Los Angeles and London Offices with RTKL, and dTank teams.
After I taught at Art Center Europe in Vevey Switzerland in the final year of that institution’s life I was invited to move to Los Angeles for a position as a senior designer and design project manager at a company called Hauser which employed about 100 designers and model makers in a converted theater owned by the actor Mickey Rooney in Westlake Village.
First, I lived in a hotel. The first house I rented in LA was shared with the actor John Savage and his wife. John is known for his roles in The Deer Hunter, The Godfather, Twin peaks, and the thin Red Line. I taught at Art Center over a period of about 25 years and was the Chair of the Product Design Program at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
I had some extraordinary experiences in Detroit but I think I should not dwell too much there for sake of brevity. The program I chaired at CCS had then about 40 instructors and was the largest ID program in the Americas. I worked for a period as a manager for a Hong Kong-based design firm that designed products for airline catalogs.
I started writing books on design about 15 years ago. I had observed that few product designers write books and there is a need for reference books in design education. My contacts with the more than a million designers in the online Groups I had established allowed me to make designers aware of this resource.
I have since published about thirty books on subjects related to design, innovation, design thinking, design research, service design, product design, and design methods. They have sold and distributed hundreds of thousands of copies. Design Thinking Process and Methods manual is now in its fifth edition and is 660 pages!
You have designed over 1,000 products, experiences, and services; what are your design principles and where do you find your inspiration?
I find inspiration in people and from experiences. I am inspired by unorthodox disruptive creative people. My heroes were always people who transgressed the normal. They were disruptive. The type of people who if they are given a page with ruled lines will write or sketch sideways rather than between the lines. People like Sylvia Plath, George Orwell, Jane Goodall, Ettore Sottsass, Emmeline Pankhurst, T.E. Lawrence, and Johannes Itten. I have worked with many such people. They do not interface easily with corporations.
I am a product of the century of Modernism. I follow loosely Dieter Rams ten principles of design. There is no better summary. His view is Eurocentric.
Good design is innovative, Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is long-lasting. Good design is thorough down to the last detail, Good design is environmentally-friendly, Good design is as little design as possible. Making things people need is better than making people want things.
The teachers at the Bauhaus were influenced by revolutionary communist theory that wanted to overthrow design traditions to build a brave new world order that served the industrial age. I see value in traditional approaches to design as well as in modernist theory.
I think that the Japanese understood a better relationship between people and materials always reminding us that we exist with nature not dominating it. Good design can also be found in the traditional craft cultures of old civilizations such as in India, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. In these places, good design is not just as little as possible
When I was managing my own design office in Sydney I took some long breaks from design practice. One of those breaks was to work on an archaeological dig in the Jordan Eastern Black Desert at Um El Qatain with a group of archaeologists from Oxford University and I taught for a period at Art Center in Switzerland and spent some time in the Annapurna Region of the Himalayas in Nepal… I traveled down the Nile on a Felucca and through the Sinai with a Bedouin in a Jeep. I worked on archaeological digs in the Middle East and in The United States.
Stefano Marzano who once headed Philips Design in the Netherlands told this story when I studied a short course with the Domus Academy. His grandfather was a clothing designer and maker in Italy. He would first sit down with the customer and discuss their life like a psychologist or a friend before designing and making the clothes for them. Two weeks after the brief the customer would return and try on the clothes. When the customer returned his grandfather would wheel out a “magic old mirror” from a closet. Stefano noticed that the customer would always smile when they first looked into the magic mirror and saw how the clothes perfectly suited them because the grandfather understood them. Stefano saw their smile in the magic mirror while he played in feet deep cloth cuttings on the floor and for him, the smile was the essence of good design. The smile was the essence and evidence of user-centered design. Decades later that smile is still for him the best test of good design.
One of the most influential European Industrial designers of the 20th Century, Ettore Sottsass considered that the greatest design is often found not in great architectural monuments or museums but in the humblest of objects we use or encounter every day.
“I don’t understand why the President’s speech is better than love whispered in a room at night.” “When I was young, I gathered information only from fashion magazines or from very ancient, forgotten destroyed dusty civilizations never from solidity. ” At the beginning, when I was young, full of presumption, theoretical, very aggressive, I was very tied to turn of the century functionalism, to the idea of functional style. but gradually I left that behind because I found a new source of inspiration. from then on, I began to try to figure out what I could be in terms of this society, the people, the necessity which surrounded me.”-Ettore Sottsass.
Sottsass started his career in Mussolini’s Italy. Ettore Sottsass was also a friend of Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Picasso, Max Ernst, Alice Toklas, Chet Baker, Jack Kerouac, Helmut Newton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Alberto Moravia and Ernest Hemingway. Sottsass met Kerouac following his recuperation from Nephritis that he had contracted in India in 1961 Roberto Olivetti funded a treatment program for Sottsass at the Stanford Medical Center, Palo Alto, California, After months of recuperation at the Center, Sottsass met Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in San Francisco.
Concept Development for Turnstone a Steelcase company.
When did you join the Design Community College in Los Angeles as President? Can you tell us more about the programs and specialties taught?
I established DCC in 2012. DCC teaches certificate programs and individual online classes in Design Thinking, Industrial Design, Service Design, Experience Design UX, Interaction Design, Color, Business Practices, Portfolio, Human Factors, Mapping Methods, Design Methods, and Design Research to designers, engineers, and executives, and other areas.
Our students are mostly working designers, engineers, and executives who are seeking to expand their knowledge to practice design in these areas. We have presented hundreds of online and face-to-face corporate educational workshops in these areas. Most of the classes are online now because of the pandemic.
Students have come from companies such as Tesla, NASA, Pininfarina, MIT Stanford, Samsung, Logitech, Steelcase, Nike, Starbucks, and universities and government organizations. Students are able to access needed skills for design practice without enrolling in traditional degree programs. For example, one student was a biomedical engineer from Siemens in Cambridge UK who is managing industrial designers and needed to know more about industrial design. The education system in the United States is broken so we wanted to fulfill a need by providing good quality education that is relevant, affordable, and flexible for students.
We have educated about 7,500 students. Many students do several courses. We have had students from Africa access classes from cell phones. In the United States, good quality education for many people has become inaccessible due to cost. The best design schools charge Ivy League tuition.
Design Managers and Directors may need to learn new skills but they do not want to commit to a graduate degree program that will take them away from their work. A lot of the content of degree programs is not immediately useful to them. They want relevant skills that can be learned when they have time available. They want live teachers, not prerecorded classes. They want teachers with high-level teaching and design practice experience. Those are the things we deliver!
What do you think are the biggest challenges and opportunities in your career now?
I am always interested in trying something new. Something that brings me to new people and new places and new ways of thinking. Because my work always involves software, I find one of the challenges is keeping up to date with software. I have done update courses for about a dozen types of software used for UX and interactive instructional design recently.
I think design education in the United States has problems as an industry and is ready for some disruption to become more flexible, relevant, and affordable. Designers need skills now that are hybrid skills to enable the design of systems of products, services, and experiences. These skills cross traditional boundaries of disciplines like graphic design, interior design, architecture, experience design and web design.
You founded and manage design Groups on LinkedIn dedicated to Design with over 1.3 million followers, what type of content are you sharing? What are your main goals?
There are 1.3 million group members in the design groups that I have established on LinkedIn. I think I have about 40,000 followers but this is increasing currently by perhaps one thousand each week. All these people share their thoughts and experiences in my groups. I established the groups when Linkedin added the group feature. That was probably now fifteen years ago. At that time design discussions were mostly national. Some designers belonged to national design institutions in their particular country.
This level of reach in social media can only be compared to the nightly viewers of media organizations like CNN and Fox news. Fox news for designers. I try to promote using this reach the greater good through design.
I understood from working as a designer in Australia, Europe, and the United States that there were then considerable differences in the practice of design in different areas of the world.
For example, I saw working then in Los Angeles that design consultancies there used design research somewhat less than design consultancies in London. One of the successes of IDEO at that time was infusing the culture of Silicon Valley with ideas of the European partners including Bill Moggridge and Tim Brown. I wanted to establish an international venue for design discussion where ideas could be shared internationally in real-time. Innovation coming through sharing different approaches and ideas. Like the coffee houses of Vienna in the 19th Century where different cultures and ideas came into collision over coffee creating innovative music and art. So, I established the first LinkedIn Groups for Design Research, Product Design, Graphic Design, Web Design, Interior Design, Service Design, design education and Architecture. Some of those groups have close to 200,000 members today. It is necessary to moderate some of the groups to allow open discussion. Ray Kinsella an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice telling him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond in the field of dreams said “If you build it, they will come” and so I created the groups more than a million working designers did
I am exposed through this extraordinary number of practicing designers to a river of design every day. I am swimming in a river of ideas. I share those things that I find personally inspiring and interesting. I sometimes feel like I am exposed to more design from more places than almost anyone in the world. I share those things that I think need to be shared about new developments in all areas of design. New ideas, new fields of design, progress. I am also interested in great design from history, not just from the 20th Century. There are so many ideas that have been forgotten!
Look Seating For Haworth with Robert Leonetti and Haworth Team.
What are you working on at the moment, and do you have any upcoming projects that you’re able to tell us about?
At the moment I am working on some new books related to design. I have written and published about thirty design books in areas such as design thinking, product design, web design, service design, design research, color, and design practice. Twenty years ago, before design thinking was widely known I felt that design thinking could be valuable to people who were not trained designers to solve their problems and create solutions for example a village in Africa that lacked health facilities or clean drinking water. Traditional aid has limitations. I could see that design thinking was being taught to wealthy western students at prestigious institutions. I created a free downloadable summary of the main ideas and the process of design thinking that anyone anywhere could download for free. It has been downloaded more than 75,000 times to people in every country in the world.
I also wrote a substantial textbook of more than 600 pages on design thinking processes and methods which is used as a textbook in many colleges and universities today. I developed a more complete system of methods than had previously been used in design thinking. For example, I connected Journey and experience mapping approaches with design thinking and sprints which hadn’t previously been part of what was associated with design thinking.
I was told that Google used some of my books when they were developing sprint methodology. A few weeks ago, a manager at UNICEF thanked me for my books and work on Design Thinking.
Which advice do you give to your students, starting their career in Design?
Here are some things that have guided me:
‘Design is creativity with strategy ‘ Think about creating things that are unique and express your unique voice. What is unique about you? What do you want to be doing in five years, in ten years? How are you going to get there? Travel. One of the best design schools is an air ticket. The greatest designers in history in the US such as Eames and Lowey Mies, and I’ve all had lived in more than one culture and country. In the US if you take the names of the top 100 historical designers and architects all but a few of them lived in two or more countries. Travel puts more spanners in your design toolbox. Great writers like Falkner and Orwell drew on their life experiences in their writing. It is the same for design. Dull Hollywood soap operas may be dull because the writers lack life.
Design Is best when It Is not noticed – Paul Gardien, Philips experiences. Not every object needs to scream for attention. A room full of such objects can be overpowering. When Sottsass designed furniture, he was thinking about the room in which the chair would live and of the life of the people in the room. “To be an architect, you have to become very gentle, very calm, and extremely sensitive about life,” he said.
Designers are not artists. Successful designs live in people’s homes. You are not a solo performer. A designer needs to respect the value that others can bring. You are more like a band member than an artist. A good band needs a group of good musicians to be playing together in tune The responsibilities of designers are not the same as the responsibilities of artists. Designers have responsibilities to clients, to users, to the environment, as well as to themselves.
We work with increasingly diminishing resources in a world where the climate is changing and where the living species, we depend on our fast disappearing. One-third of tree species are threatened with extinction. It has been estimated that there are four chairs already in existence for every living person in the world. It is not enough to design another good-looking chair. There are already many good-looking chairs in the world. An average consumer throws away 70 pounds (31.75 kilograms) of clothing per year.
Globally we produce 13 million tons of textile waste each year 95% of which could be reused or recycled. The average use of a consumer electronics product is only six to eight months. Design for need, not fashion. Design things people need rather than things people want. Design them to be valued and to last. The sketch isn’t the end product. Do not make the sketch or the prototype jewelry that stands in the way of the best design. Iterate until you can’t improve it anymore and let the customer be part of the process all the way through the design development. Designers must have empathy. Artists do not need empathy to the same extent. An artist’s focus is self-expression. The needs of your users are most important to a designer. Beware of drugs and alcohol. Some people are genetically predisposed to dependency. I have seen these things destroy the lives, careers, and opportunities of some great designers and good people.
Much of what we call good design is about creating objects and experiences that define status and gender. Fast cars and designer furniture have status. Design helps define the structure of our society. What we find beautiful is often related to some evolutionary advantage. In all societies, for example, people find large trees with thick branches reachable from the ground beautiful. Some researchers argue that those trees allowed us to escape wild animals. Our eyes are more sensitive to color in the yellow-orange area of the spectrum. Researchers have various explanations including that this allowed us to see fruit at a greater distance or allowed us to see better under the firelight.
Clients often say they want a design like Apple but when the time comes, they are not prepared to invest in the risks that Apple has taken. Innovation involves risk and courage. Take calculated risks. Love those things the most that can love you back. Your relationships with people are ultimately more important than your relationship to design. Design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society. Design that is the result of inner compulsion has meaning. All successful design has a unique and compelling back story. Seek out the best mentors. Go to the best design school that you can afford.
In the US there are perhaps 120 schools teaching industrial design. In the first-tier design offices, the employees come from only half a dozen of those schools. If you are designing physical products like furniture, learn also about service design and experience design. Ninety-five percent of Americans work in service industries. If you design the system of products, services, and experiences together, the value is ten to twenty percent greater designing them together rather than independently. It is not all bad to get fired. It can put you on a better course. Make the right type of mistakes. Some of the best designers were fired. If you are a great designer you can expect to be fired at least once. Expect change. Keep reinventing yourself. Nobody sets the rules but you and you can change your future at any moment. Never give up.
X System Storage for Haworth with Ken Krayer and Haworth team.
We are looking for talented young designers, Interior Designers, Furniture Designers, and Manufacturers to join the most anticipated program dedicated to Furniture & Interiors.
The SIT Furniture Design Award ™ was created as a way to celebrate and share the remarkable work of furniture designers and those who use furniture in their projects. Creativity, innovative vision, and accessibility in the furniture design community deserve to be applauded and shared widely, across the world.
Remo Hämmerle is the Owner, Furniture Designer & Maker of Owner of Fasswerk Hämmerle; based in Switzerland, he is giving a new life to old oak barrels. Winner of the SIT Furniture Design Award 2020 with the Maximus Dining table, Remo & his “partner in crime” Nadine Ledergerber shared their passion for wood & craftsmanship.
Can you share with us your professional journey? Where are you based?
When I was a little boy, my neighbor built a small wooden bicycle shed. This fascinated me so much that I decided to do a carpentry apprenticeship. At the age of 15, I started my apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker in a small family company.
The apprenticeship was hard, and I failed the final exam and had to add a year. After that, I worked in the assembly department of a large furniture company. I did not like this at all. My girlfriend Nadine Ledergerber gave me the idea to make furniture out of old wine barrels.
The first attempts failed miserably. But I did not want to give up. So I kept trying and slowly but surely it worked. We started selling our products and the feedback of our customers, it was so satisfying that we founded our own company named Fasswerk Hämmerle in 2013.
We took about 4 years to perfect our products. It wasn’t until 2017 that we really hit the market with a small collection of barrel furniture. But then it really started. The difficult thing was getting up again and again and holding out when there was a lack of orders. But since we keep getting each other out of the deep, we are now where we are now. And that’s cool.
We are based in Goldach, Canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
What is “Fasswerk Hämmerle” company story? What are your guiding design principles?
Barrel Design & Woodwork: Each oak barrel tells its own story. It’s handmade and refined in the best wineries to perfection. We continue to tell its story. We breathe new life into age-old oak barrels. In our expert hands, they are carefully prepared and processed into unique barrels, tables and wooden works. We also create new custom-made pieces of furniture from hand-picked wood.
We combine Swiss craftsmanship with modern design and sustainable upcycling. Each piece of furniture gets its own personality and becomes a unique piece handcrafted to your wishes.
Sustainable Switzerland: Sustainable forestry and Swiss retailers are very close to our hearts. That’s why we work with regional companies and only process FSC-certified wood.
Partners in Crime – Remo Hämmerle & Nadine Ledergerber
In our opinion, old oak barrels have great potential for furniture design. Their shape and design radiate something venerable that should be preserved. For us, every barrel is full of possibilities and inspiration. It offers room forever new creations and ideas. Together with high-quality solid wood, the barrel becomes an innovative combination of classic craftsmanship and modern design. The results are works which we always develop in close collaboration with our customers.
When have you started using old oak barrels as the prime material for your furniture design?
Since we founded our company in 2013. That was the first thought and is still our main material we use.
What makes the “Maximus” Dining table unique? How many hours of work does one table require?
Our dining table Maximus is sustainably upcycled from used wine barrels. It’s made out of barrel staves from 3 used Burgundy barrels from the region, which contained red wine. They are framed in solid oak wood. The gaps are filled with epoxy resin in black and the solid steel table legs are modeled on the curvature of the barrel staves. Barrel Oak is still in very good condition after used wine storage and is perfect for the creation of new furniture. The goal is to create sustainable “new”.
The complete table is made of materials from Switzerland and is handmade in our workshop in Goldach.
The production is extremely complex. The barrel staves must first be dried, then they are cut to size and lined up so that the distances are approximately equal. When filling with epoxy, it is important to calculate the exact amount and to make sure that no bubbles form when pouring (sometimes I have to pour at 2 intervals). The drying time usually takes three days.
After that, I can continue to work on the table. The whole process takes about 50-60 hours. ( More information on the Maximus Dining Table)
Where can we buy a “Maximus” dining table?
At the moment you can buy Maximus in our workshop or directly on our website. The cool thing is when you buy this table you get 6 bottles of the red wine that was stored in these barrels that were processed in the table.
What are you working on at the moment, and do you have any upcoming Design projects or collaborations that you’re able to share with us?
We have a partnership with a grill manufacturer in St. Gallen called Azado Grill. We are currently working on a limited-edition version, where we produce the wooden elements using the same process as the Maximus dining table.
“Fassado” Grill Limited Edition by Fasswerk – Azado AG