Dwell 2015 09

modern world
best in show
incredibly primal steps: You see it, hammer
it, heat it—fire, melt, poof! Hammer
it into shape, and that’s it. As soon as we
were confronted with it, it posed a big
dilemma. It really took us a while to
achieve such simplicity.
How do you feel this fits into your
trajectory of work as a designer?
One responsibility that I understand, more
and more, is that in the end, we work with
companies, and those companies are partially
in danger. Most of them are European,
producing locally in Europe, so we have to
think carefully when we do things. Now,
with globalization and the movement of
everything, design has to be much better
every time. You need to find some clue—
a reason—to resist local production.
Have you found there are others that
share your desire for a more organic
way of producing things?
I’m happy I’m working with some producers
that all have high expectations for good
design. So, they’ve got different production
techniques. Some of them are more industrial,
some of them are less, but at least
something that they all share is that if you
do something, it has to be worth doing it.
To you, what makes it worth it?
One of the biggest considerations behind
furniture is to make pieces that are able to
travel time. If you look at all the production
of the ’90s and the design, a lot of things
were not able to do that. They were getting
old instantly, and they were getting old by
their visual language, and also by their
function. They were just not necessary. This
is one of the worst things you can do for
furniture. They have to be able to be kind of
non-temporal. In this regard, I think we
work with the right partners.
The Officina collection offers
a range of material options,
including steel, tempered
glass, American walnut,
Carrara marble, Ardesia slate,
and leather. Shown here are
the chair and table with galvanized,
gray metallized frames;
on the previous spread, a
black wrought-iron frame is
paired with a polypropylene
seat and back.
“For me, as a product designer, I feel like the
strongest political action that any citizen makes
is by buying things. We are buying things all the
time, and of course, it has a huge, huge
consequence on the way the world goes.”
—Erwan Bouroullec, designer
40
SEPTEMBER 2015
DWELL