How would you describe your design aesthetic and the way you think about design?

Since I’ve been on my own, and actually when I worked for a firm, I find that my designs are very much dictated by my clients. My clients are very savvy – they have a very strong sense of what they like. If they’re hiring a designer, it’s because design is important to them. The client always dictates the mood.

Which makes sense, because they’re going to be living there!

Of course. And then I put their ideas through my filter, and I help make their ideas more cohesive and functional. If they like this picture, and what it to feel that way, I make that work for them.

Is that what people give you? Pictures from magazines? How do they communicate what they’re feeling?

That’s what I ask them to do. It’s always best to start with pictures. With words, we might be visualizing completely different things, but with a picture we’re on the same page. I think it helps to look at a ton of different pictures and then try to communicate what we like about the pictures.

Could you walk me through working with a client? It starts with bringing pictures to the table. What happens next?

It depends on the scope of the job. I mostly do renovation work. I like to do big projects where we’re really going to change a space. I’ll do decorating jobs here and there, but most of the work I do has been more than that. We’ll figure out how the space needs to function, if there’s a bathroom or kitchen that needs to be updated, or rooms that need to be moved around. Then based on the pictures we’ll do floor plans and pick furniture that meets the mood and the needs.

That’s a nice segue into how I met you – at BKLYN Designs this year. Several of the furniture designers and makers you work with were there.

Right. I do a ton of custom work. I know exactly how I think something should look for my client. Once I get to know them and start to sense their needs and what they like, I find that’s it’s not easy to just go out and buy a pre-existing piece that I think will be right. So 95% of what I buy, I design.

Cool!

I found some really great artisans in Brooklyn – a lot of people that are younger and starting their own businesses, or maybe have been in business for five years. You know some of them – I work a lot with Uhuru and Matthew Fairbank. They are really passionate about their craft, and it’s been great to work with them. I’ll bring them a certain idea, and they’ll bring in their expertise. Those collaborations are one of my favorite parts of what I do.

How did you get into interior design? When did you know it’s what you wanted to do?

When I was in college, I interned at Black Book magazine, and when I graduated I worked there for two years. I kind of floated around there – I started in the art department, I worked in the fashion department… I knew I wanted to do something creative but I wasn’t sure exactly what. Eventually I figured out that publishing wasn’t for me, so I went back to school for interior design. It seemed like a flexible profession, and one where I could either work for a firm, or I could do it smaller on my own. And it was something I could still do if I left New York, whereas for fashion you really need to be here.

Can you describe how you transitioned from working for someone else to deciding to do your own thing? That’s always an exciting part of the story!

I always knew I wanted to start my own business, but I wasn’t expecting to do it so soon. I worked for different designers when I went back to school, but I’d really only been out and working full time for about a year. A friend of a friend called me because she had bought an apartment on the Upper West Side and wanted to gut it. She said, “I’ve met a bunch of interior designers, but they’re all older and they’re completely out of touch with what I want.”

My first reaction was, “I work for a firm and I don’t have time, sorry!” But I ended up just meeting her for coffee, and we got along really well, so I took on the project while I was working. Then I got another client, so I just quit my job! It was a leap of faith, and it’s been good. It’s been almost three years now.

What’s been the hardest part to learn about working for yourself?

The hardest part for me is that I’m not sure how I’m going to get my next client. I’ve worked well and gotten along really well with all my clients, but I never know where they’re going to come from – they come from the most unexpected places. I’m always scared that my projects are going to end and I’m not going to have any more work, but it hasn’t happened yet!

It’s definitely a rollercoaster! Now that you’ve been in this a few years, what advice do you have for creatives that want to strike out on their own?

You need to go into it knowing that it’s not going to be easy. But if your really want to do it, I think you can make it work no matter what. If you stick with it long enough, it will work.

What’s been your proudest moment along the way?

I’ve just started completing some of my bigger projects. I take easily two years to do one job. When you’re working on something that long, having a project wrapped up and photographed is amazing! And seeing my clients satisfied. I know they’re putting a lot of faith in me, and hearing them say that it looks great and they’re really happy is the best feeling.

See more at laurensterndesign.com

Stephan Jaklitsch has been the sole architect for Marc Jacobs International. In the ten years since his firm opened, he’s built an impressive 100+ projects all over the world. He also recently published a monograph with ORO Editions which is receiving great reviews. Stephan’s work is modern yet warm. He is best known from the balanced yet unexpected mix of materials used in his work. http://sjaklitsch.com

When you started your company, what was the transition like from being an employee to being self employed?

In some ways it is not that different. I think everyone has this view of an architect as a single person deciding things. But it’s a team of people working together, working with the client, trying to solve problems.

When you start your own practice, there is also the issue of finding your own voice and taking the time to explore the issues that you yourself are interested in. In that sense, it is very interesting and, for me, it was a good challenge.

What were your early projects like?

My first solo project was for a hedge fund in Manhattan – designing their offices and trading floor. It was a great challenge. The project was located in a neo-gothic townhouse off of Madison Avenue, so the design was very much about respecting the spirit of the existing building.

Some of the other projects were apartment and town house renovations. One of my first fashion projects was a small showroom for Danilo Dolci, which is in my new book. The design had to adapt to three different brands simultaneously, which was a challenge. Shortly after, we were asked to work on our first Marc Jacobs store.

Oh, so right from the beginning of your career you have been involved with very high end designers like Marc Jacobs?

We started doing Robert Duffy’s apartment in June of 1999 and then by the fall of that year we began working on the San Francisco store.

And how did you get to this point? Were you with a team of people or was it just you as a sole proprietor?

In the beginning it was just me, working out of my studio apartment. Within a year, we grew to three people – all working out of my studio. We moved to our current office on 27th Street in February of 2000. I remember it being a very liberating thing to finally have that separation. We started out with just two little offices on the 9th floor. As the business grew, we started taking over more and more of the floor. About a year ago we took over the entire floor.

That’s great! Do you feel that there is a connection between your design work and that of Robert Duffy and Marc Jacobs? There has to be an interesting relationship between the architect and the client when the client is also a designer. I would imagine you have to be very in tune with their design sense, would you say that’s true?

Yes and no, it’s not really an easy, one-to-one thing. There are things about Marc Jacobs clothing that make them special – things that maybe only the person wearing the clothes would know. Like a simple thermal T-shirt made out of cashmere. They take ordinary things and transform them, using refined materials or tailoring to make them special.

Marc and Robert didn’t even have a sign on their offices, and the sign on their first few stores were only about two inches high – which is still true of New York’s Bleecker & Mercer Street stores and the San Francisco store. So, their aesthetic was very quiet, and subdued. I think, if you look at our work, you first see one broad stroke, and then as you look more and more into the details you begin to see the complexity in the work. And in that spirit there is definitely a connection.

And, why do you consider the details and texture to be so important to your work?

I think architecture has to work at the large scale, the medium scale, and the foreground. It has to work from across the city, as well as being up close. I think the closer you get, the more information you may begin to process. For each project, we always try to play with details and explore different materials and textures. But there is always a thematic core that runs through each of our projects, which connects the materials we choose.

Is there a specific approach that your firm takes to design?

Well, it’s one approach for a residential project and another for a commercial project. Though, there is a certain theatricality that links the two. For a commercial project, I ask the client what they want the customer to really experience as they cross the threshold. Do they want surprise? There’s a sort of psychological component to it. Do they want calm or do they want excitement? It changes for each brand and client. From that conversation, a certain mood that is set, and then we go onto manipulating lighting, scale, proportion and materiality to reflect what the client is looking for.

Speaking of scale, you have recently been expanding into product design as well as urban scaled projects. How is that going?

How IS that going? It is definitely a process! We are currently developing some houseware products. We are exploring a number of different themes; some of them are directly related to structures we find in nature. That’s really about all I can say about it right now, it is still very much in progress.

We’re always open to doing other things though. I was trained as an architect and there has always been this sort of dichotomy between interior architecture and architecture, which I view as false. I am sort of surprised by the profession actually, and how they view that division. But, being trained as an architect makes you believe that you should be able to design anything from a soup spoon to a city. It’s a natural sort of progression. Most architects get smaller projects early on and as they mature and gain more responsibility the clients become more willing to trust them.

There is always this problem, I think, with clients who think you can only do a project if you’ve done one before. We’ve worked with clients who have asked us to do things because they like to work with us and they respect our attitude, even though we may not have done that project type before. We actually just finished our first restaurant in Milan which is a new typology for us. I had never done a retail store before working with Marc Jacobs and I had never done a trading floor before working on the hedge fund’s office.

No better way to get experience than to dive right in!

Well, there is a passion that you should invest in what you’re doing. As long as you’re willing to learn and you’re willing to put a certain amount of energy into it, I think that a smart client recognizes that they are probably going to get a better project as a result of you putting in that extra effort.

What advice do you give to young architects today that are looking to dive in and start their own firm?

Well, it’s really not a bad time. Actually, a downturn can be a really great time to start, if your overhead is low and you’re willing to take risk. It can be a great time because you’ll grow as the market recovers. It takes time for people to know what you’re doing, where and how to seek you out, and help you realize a project. But, I think it’s also a matter of remaining true to what you really believe in. We take an academic approach and we treat design very seriously. We have never lost that. That’s what we do, and I don’t think that will ever change here.

See more at http://sjaklitsch.com

The Breslin Bar and Restaurant

We’re always really interested in when people take the jump from being employed to being self-employed. When did that happen for you two?

Robin: Neither of us had a conventional job for years as we were working freelance in film. We met working as production designers.

Which is project to project.

Right. It is essentially being self employed so the leap to our own company was a pretty natural transition. And we have always been more interested in finding creative challenges than in any traditional notion of job security.

How did you get into the film world?

I was painting and working in an art gallery after college and Stephen was working in an architecture firm. We didn’t know each other then but we both entered the film business through somewhat different avenues. Because of my background, I was hired by Martin Scorsese as visual consultant on The Age of Innocence and Stephen was hired because of his drawing skills to work as a draftsman. We met a few years and few films later.

Film is a wonderful venue for people interested in design. There are many different kinds of opportunities, and you get to do a lot of different kinds of projects. Film is also very fast paced. I think people would be surprised by how incredibly rigorous it is. The schedules, the budgets, the demands are really extraordinary. Not to mention the fact that the camera is a very discerning eye from which flaws and inconsistencies cannot hide. In film, we were able to experiment with a variety of spaces that have really helped hone our skills.

211 Elizabeth Street: Interior

How did that lead you to architecture?

Stephen was an architect before working in the film industry and his passion for architecture has been forever present, even in our film work. I always had a devotion and deep interest in space and design that finally found its outlet.

We worked in film for several years and did a lot of amazing projects. But we always wanted to get back to a place of permanence in our work, back to building things that were not temporary and made purely to be seen on screen. In film, you build these amazing things and then they are torn down. As designers, Stephen and I are very devoted to a deep sense of materiality, craft and detailing. Our work is never thin in the way people think of sets. And it was hard, after time, to watch the designs being dismantled after filming.

Right. And for sets you’re usually faking the materiality, right?

On many sets that’s the case, but we never worked that way. This is an interesting paradox. We had a reputation for designing sets that were solid and real. Some of the actors and directors who saw and worked on the sets were taken by how well they were built and how convincing they were. At one point we were working with Ben Stiller who said, “Work on my house, because this set looks better than my house.” That is, in a nutshell, how we made the transition to our own architecture and design firm.

Stephen and I have always been interested in making things, large and small. We’re married, and we came together, in part, because that’s a big tenet in both of our lives. We wanted to create our own world – including our own business which was about building and making and creating all sorts of environments and objects.

211 Elizabeth Street: Interior

What were your first projects as Roman & Williams?

Initially, we designed furniture and small residences and then were hired to do a large residential project for Ben Stiller. Ben just believed in our ability from having seen our work in, as we had done several films together and he knew we were building a design firm. This project led to some other high profile residential work.

Our goal was always to come back to New York permanently, which we did in 2003. We opened this office in 2003 and pretty quickly met Andre Balazs and starting working on the New York Standard. Ace Hotels followed, as well as our client for 211 Elizabeth Street – our first ground up building – so we had the opportunity to develop our commercial practice while we continued to design residences.

How do the different types of design you’ve done inform each other?

We’ve found that designing hotels takes us back, almost full-circle, to our film work. There is something very theatrical about designing hotels. We’re creating spaces where people will eat and party and it is fascinating to see how people interact with the space.

There is a narrative element to all of our work that also takes us back to film. We really spend a lot of time thinking about who will use the space and how, which is exactly what we did with the characters in our films.

It’s great to be in a space we designed and see where people gravitate and want to sit. Our hotel work is definitely affected by our residential work. We make hotels that are comfortable, and sort of groovy – never generic. I never was that interested in staying in a Hilton. It just never felt personal enough.

And, though I mentioned the theatrical element, it is important to distinguish between design that is very theatrical and a theatrical way of thinking about design. We don’t respond to spaces that feel too theatrical or hyper-designed.

Ace Hotel: Room

Yes, sometimes that feels very forced, like this is “Design” with a capitol D.

Exactly! It’s important to define that. You have a design blog, we have a design firm, but Stephen and I often say we don’t like design. Not everyone understands what we mean when we say that. We don’t like when design is forced, or it’s fussy, or it feels precious. A residential building or an interior is not necessarily meant to be like a piece of avant-garde art. It’s in a neighborhood and people are living in it. There are ways to show your interest in design through materials, details and careful craftsmanship, versus any overarching concept that eclipses its humanity.

How would you describe your approach to architecture?

In some ways, inventing some brand new shape that no one has seen before is not that difficult. We have very active imaginations too. But we’re much more interested in creating something that is original but that somehow has cues that people recognize, that make them feel comfortable. Our ideas always begin with an amalgam of things that we understand from the world around us. We all have references and memories. If you refer to those things that occupy your memory, and then develop and advance them, we think it makes for a very interesting experience.

211 Elizabeth Street is a good example. It has a certain modesty in terms of its design approach. It is a hand-laid brick building with traditional details and when we started people said “It’s an historical building.” But now that it is finished, people understand that we didn’t copy anything, that we combined a lot of different ideas to create something new, but something that looks like it might have been there forever. Now the feedback we get is that it is a very human building that feels at ease in the neighborhood and that makes people feel comfortable. We don’t think anyone really wants to live in a sculpture.

211 Elizabeth Street: Rendering

Speaking of history and tradition – Stephen does all of your presentation renderings by hand, right?

Yes, Stephen draws, and beautifully. The entire set of construction drawings for Kate Hudson’s house was hand drafted. That is really unheard of today. It’s this beautiful relic that I keep in the drawer.

Stephen calls himself Rip Van Winkle because so few people still hand draw. Our big document sets have to be in CAD. There’s just no other way to sustain the business – there aren’t enough people who draw, and you can’t move fast enough. But for presentations it’s incredible to be able to use hand drawings. Stephen also designs as he draws and draws as he designs. The process is one for him so he is working out design problems as he’s drawing. We have always worked together using drawing as our starting point.

It has an emotional aspect to it.

Precisely. It is so engaging, even mesmerizing. I mean that in a very practical way. But, that wasn’t the goal – he just loves to draw and that is how we express ideas. And that is how we’ve always run our business. We started as a little mom and pop shop, the two of us in the living room. Seeing that reaction was one of the things that told us, “We might make this work.” And then we rented this office on Lafayette Street, with $4 left in the bank.

Fast forward to today, and you’re being called one of the year’s hottest design teams. How does that feel?

Of course, it is great to be recognized, to have the work appreciated. But there is an aspect of what we do that is becoming trendy now, and I’m a bit unhappy about that. There’s a big Victoriana thing happening right now and we don’t want to get lumped in with anything that feels theme driven. We don’t believe our way of thinking about design is trendy. It’s about what we feel is important to put on the planet, and what we want to do with our lives. We’re interested in developing a lasting structure within which our ideas can evolve. So we’re happy about the press and we’re happy about the interest, but I’d like it to continue past the moment.

211 Elizabeth Street

“We create our designs through an iterative and experimental process. After brainstorming an initial concept, we write a pattern-generating algorithm in the computer through which we further explore our ideas and ultimately create the finished product. You can use the applets we share here to create your own one of a kind jewelry designs or just to play and learn.”

Pinch Bracelet

One thing that really sets Nervous system apart is that your products aren’t just about the final pieces, but the programs you build to generate the designs.

Jessica: That’s what’s always interested us. It’s how we would want to design anything. People at Harvard heard I went to MIT and said, “Oh, do you know how to program computers?” I got pushed into that box, and decided to explore it. I had previously done a lot of programming, and worked as a research assistant at the Media Lab. Jessie’s background is in computer science. We have a shared interest in computational design.

I just opened up one of your applets and started playing with it – it’s really cool. How many of your customers are getting custom jewelry? Is that a big selling point?

Jessica: Conceptually, it is. We have a lot of people who use the applets. But not that many people actually purchase the things they designed themselves. We’re not really pushing that aspect. It’s there as an educational tool which allows people to understand our process.

How did you two meet?

Jessica: We lived in the same dorm. MIT has this crazy dorm system where houses get to choose the people who move into them, so they maintain a certain culture.

Jesse: And we started Nervous System when we were both still in school. At that point, Jessica was studying architecture at Harvard’s GSD and I was at MIT. The jewelry sort of emerged from work we were doing for Jessica’s architecture degree, which used a script to generate a spring mesh.

Filament Necklace

So how did an architecture project transition into designing jewelry?

Jessica: I was just working on a project for school, and making a lot of laser cut models, and eventually 3D-printed models. Some of the pieces were lying around on my desk. The weirdly-cut paper started to curl up. People kept coming up to my desk and asking, “Is that a bracelet?” I started thinking that I could try making bracelets.

Jesse: We threw them up on Etsy, on a whim.

Jessica: Once I did it, there was a tremendous response, so I decided to keep doing it on the side and make a little extra money while I was in school.

What were they made out of?

Jessica: They were polystyrene, which was totally horrible, because they didn’t have longevity. They were very fragile. But we sold them only $15 or something. I was making them at school – I wasn’t considering outsourcing, so they weren’t as durable as I wanted them to be.

You use a lot of unconventional materials for jewelry, like rubber and rapid prototypes.

Jesse: We approach materials practically. We wanted to make stuff out of a strong metal that would be durable and affordable, so we naturally chose stainless steel. We wanted to use a flexible material that wasn’t likely to break, so rubber was the natural choice. We take things as they come. We don’t have a background in jewelry design, so we don’t have a predetermined conception about how things should be made.

Radiolara Necklace

When did Nervous System become more than a side project?

Jessica: I was selling these products, and doing studio and classes, and it got to be too much. I decided to stop doing the jewelry after a month or two. But since we thought it was fun, during the next summer we looked into doing it more seriously and maybe making it a business. We spent time looking for manufacturers, coming up with new designs, and working on the website. By November of 2007, we decided to produce a lot of pieces and try to market them. Every time we had time off, we’d work on this project again.

Jesse: It happened slowly. Our business basically launched that November. We launched the website, did our first show, and met the west coast editor of Metropolis, which led to a great article. That was pretty cool and fortuitous. Then, around February, we moved back to the east coast. The company I’d been working for also had an office in NYC, where I started working part time. In May 2008, we did the ICFF with DesignBoom, and did really well. After that, Nervous System became full-time.

Do you mostly sell through jewelry stores, or through your website?

Jessica: We sell a lot on our website, and wholesale to museum stores, boutiques, and clothing stores that sell jewelry. The larger orders are coming from museum stores. Our wholesale business is getting a lot larger, right now.

Where do you hope for your company to head?

Jessica: We’re interested in larger-scale projects. We don’t innately have any interest in jewelry, in an intellectual way. We want to work on furniture, housewares, and architectural-scale projects. A small building of some sort. Hopefully we’ll start on that in the next year. We’re hoping to move from Boston to a more rural area where we can have the land to do large-scale projects.

Radiolara Brooch

What advice do you have for creatives going into business for themselves?

Jesse: We’ve just focused on doing things that are interesting, exciting and new. We’ve gotten our stuff out there and then let the blogs and press spread it.

Jessica: There’s never been a better time than now to be out on your own, as a designer or businessperson. It’s never been easier to get your product out there. Through the internet, you can get exposed to everybody at almost no cost. You can send your things out to manufacturers and just get a couple pieces made by rapid prototyping. It’s easy to explore and see what it’s like to have a business, without putting in a huge amount of investment. People should just start doing it. Even if it’s just in their weekends or evenings.

Jesse: I was giving a talk yesterday at MassArt, and one thing the professor mentioned ties into that. In traditional manufacturing, the designer might get thousands of units made because that will bring down the cost. Then you’re stuck with thousands of units that you have to sell. I’ve seen people at shows with ceramics they’ve gotten produced, and at the end of the show they just want to give them away. They’ve already paid for the thousands of them, and they just need to get rid of them. But now there are manufacturing technologies that allow designers to do small runs and not make such an investment. You can just test out the waters – see what works and go with that.

Rite of Spring cantilevered storage by Takeshi Miyakawa

The Rite of Spring piece you showed at BKLYN Designs is incredible. How did that come about?

BKLYN Designs and ICFF both don’t have pieces like this. People just have a booth to sell their products. I decided to do an installation like this on a bigger scale, something more interactive that can inspire people .

If you go to Milan, which I haven’t, but I’ve heard stories about how they have many amazing installations. I wanted to do something like that. Not quite the same because I don’t have that kind of budget. If you spend $100,000, you can do something impressive, no matter what. I wanted to see what we could do with, say, $1,000. The idea was to do something really unique using a minimum budget and minimum material. Our ceilings aren’t high enough in the studio, so we asked the landlord to let us us build it in the loading dock! I think it came out quite successfully.

It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before. It is inspiring. I think that’s one good thing about this recession – it’s an opportunity to prove that you can still do great things without throwing a lot of money around.

You just have to have a good idea – a good concept.

Used To Be Affordable Housing cabinet by Takeshi Miyakawa

How do you come up with your concepts?

I think it depends on the project. Some of the ideas come from purely geometric studies. Some of them are based more on the shapes of nature. Or some of them, like this one, the Used To Be Affordable Housing cabinet, come from my observation of the world around me. Fragments of my daily life.

Gang of Four, that bookshelf you see [below], that’s four pieces together, and they’re leaning against each other. So individually, they do not work as a free-standing piece. Same with these chairs – they do not have any back legs, but they’re leaning against each other. That’s why I named them Family Chairs.

Suck Your Friend’s Money is very conceptual, more of a statement about design and the recession, like your Dow Jones Hanky.

Suck Your Friend’s Money – a sculptural piece in which quarters run through the elaborately constructed path. The track is built so that all smaller coins are rejected and returned. The owner gets to collect their friends’ money.

Did you study design?

I studied architecture a long time ago in Tokyo. After architecture school, I went to work for a construction company for years, and then I came to New York. About a year later I found a job in this cabinet shop, here in Williamsburg, and that’s when I thought, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

So what brought you to New York?

I was just fascinated by the city. Everything – the music, the people. I came here when I was in college, and I was just captured by it. I knew I was going to go back to Tokyo, but I decided to come back here some day.

Fractal 23 by Takeshi Miyakawa

When did you start making your furniture?

That was about 8 years ago. I first set up my shop in Tribeca. Slowly. I didn’t have any finance. Luckily I know many architects and interior designers, so they asked me to do some things for their clients. I don’t have any mass-produced pieces, yet. So everything I do is custom, made-to-order.

Do you want to head towards mass production?

Yeah, I feel that’s the only way I can survive. I am lucky to have a job I can work half my time at Rafael Viñoly Architects, making architectural models. That allows me to do more experimental things here. But many designers I know just end up being custom fabricators. It’s not easy to continue designing & selling your own stuff.

Rabbit Chair by Takeshi Miyakawa – Folding children’s chair

Have you had any manufacturers approach you?

Well last year, since the show went so well, I was about to contact somebody. And then the economy crashed, so it wasn’t good timing to talk to anybody. Now, I think the economy is going up a bit, so hopefully I will find someone to work with. I think the studio is in transition right now, from custom fabrication to mass-production. I think I will continue doing both sculptural pieces and more commercial work.

Gang of Four leaning bookshelves by Takeshi Miyakawa

Terrarium

I love that while you have a specific voice in your work, it’s expressed through a variety of mediums.

I think I learned this from being a garden designer. If somebody asks you to design a garden in the tropics, and you grew up on the east coast – you go to the tropics and learn from the experts there. You have to go to the landscape, ask what works in the environment, drive around, go to all the nurseries, and ask people what they know. Being led into a different medium, based on problem-solving, is so important.

I think that’s why materials are not something I identify my own process with. I love new materials, and new experts. For instance, to produce something like this bird bath, you need a Rhino operator, a really good CNC, a great mold maker, a caster, and the management of all that. I don’t know how I have come to be so blessed to be able to think of an idea, do a sketch, and tweak it along the way – to be a director of sorts.

Terrarium

What would you say is your speciality?

Horticulture is my craft. These are living art works. Sometimes people say, “I want to put it here,” as if they truly possessed it as object. With another piece of art, it would be yours, and you could put it wherever you want. You could put in in storage, in the dark, you could forget about it for ten years. That’s not the case here. You can’t ever totally posses the piece. In a lot of ways, it possesses you.

The work is both so simple and complex.

It’s the caring for it that is complex, because of how devoted you have to be to it – like a pet, a child, or a relationship. You can’t just buy it. You have understand the value of taking care of it.

Terrarium

What made you want to start your own business?

It had to do with practical issues. My kids were at a certain age, and I had to make a living. It wasn’t philosophical; it was just necessary. I was making a living, sort of, being a gardener – and I was making my very ethereal artwork. I realized that if I boiled down what I was doing, I really just wanted to grow things. That was really how it all started. It was the merging of what I was doing for a living, with my artwork – a marriage of two things that I was doing anyways.

We’ve found that for the people we interview, small business is about more than making money. It’s fulfilling in so many different ways.

What’s the point of having an extra 10,000 dollars in your account if you’re so incredibly angry, or so incredibly unhappy? What does it matter? It will kill you. I only want the jobs where the choices I make are appreciated. That’s a part of being an artist that I like – that you’re not judged.

Acrylic Bird Bath, rendering

How did you get your work out there?

I was showing my art in galleries, so I met a lot of gallery dealers. Marian Bosky asked me to design her garden. I had a masters in fine art; I didn’t go to landscape architecture school. But I said yes anyways. I was so honored to have that role that I just did it. If you’re really scrappy, and had to raise children, you can find a way to do just about anything.

The first people who recognized my work as valuable were the art dealers. It was having these people, who had the context for seeing it, understand it. It started this whole process of finding solutions to design problems, and then having it understood mostly in that world. In a certain context, someone looks at them, and thinks, “That looks like an expensive object.”

On the other hand, there’s something about the work that has a truly friendly and accessible feeling. What I have found, which I think is the most interesting thing, is people who appreciate my work do not necessarily have a background in the art or design worlds. You don’t have to have studied art history, or art making, to notice and appreciate it.

When people on the street outside the studio talk about what they see in here – I can hear everything. It’s like a microphone. The general question is, “How does she get that in there?” It’s kind of funny how detached people can be from how plants grow. I’ve actually had more then one person ask me if I blow the glass around the landscape.

Private Garden, New York, NY

It’s interesting to get feedback from outside of your usual community, because you can’t predict how people will respond.

And as technology assists our millions of voices, you can hear the voices of people that you don’t know. A lot of them. I’m really excited to talk to that community – the one I see on with my website, or design blogs. That’s not like anything else. It’s not like getting a review in the Times; this is different. Anybody can comment, anybody can have an interpretation of the work.

What’s next?

My work has existed in the art world, because it is in the realm of ideas and concepts. The people who collect art are the people who can support incredible craftsmanship. It has been amazing to have everything completely handmade by artisans. That is also, obviously, the opposite the of mass production. In a world where price doesn’t matter, that’s great.

Price does matter, though. Right now I’m trying to knock off my own work. For me, it’s been process of finding out what I really want to do, keeping that intact, and then changing the means of production. That was the leap, and it took seven years. So I’m figuring out how to change the production of something that costs, say, $500 a piece to produce.

The Living Necklaces, for example, need to be accessible for them to be successful. People who are in love with the idea of wearing a necklace that has a living plant in it, are not necessary the people who need to wear a status symbol of something other people can’t afford.

Living Necklace

Your company is strongly rooted in an ethical philosophy. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

The company was co-founded by myself and my sister, Teresita. Having grown up with the same people, our parents, we naturally brought the ethics we were raised with into our lives and our business. Our father was a Peace Corps volunteer. And prior to that, he studied architecture, so he has a design background which came out in our upbringing. Our mom grew up in India, where you inherently learn how to live close to the earth. In India, versus the United States, you don’t have the luxury of being hidden from how you use things and where those things go.

I think the ethics of how humans make things and do things is drastically changing. Designing that change is where we see SMIT fitting into the big picture.

Do you think that starting a business is a good way to express a moral philosophy? I think that’s a pretty new idea.

At SMIT, we design and make things for humans and their environment. The products that we choose to design at SMIT and bring into the world are because we believe in their ability to lessen our (humans’) impact on the earth’s resources in an accountable way.

Our moral philosophy comes out in how we design and the choices we make in that design process. When it comes to starting a business, it has to make money. That’s the agreed system in which we all do business. Our customers value not only our products’ physical design and functions, but also the fact that the product itself has integrity and a sustainable relationship to the world. And as long as people choose to buy the products, then the business and the moral philosophy can both work.

You’ve shown your work at ICFF and at MoMA. Those must have been two big turning points for you! How did those shows happen?

When I was graduating from Pratt, my sister was also graduating from NYU’s ITP program. She and I were kind of taking similar paths. I was creating a product, GROW, while she was creating a business, SMIT. Her business plan incorporated some ideas that I was really interested in, in terms of starting a business and entrepreneurship, and my product fit well with the business plan.

When I was a senior, I showed my project to the committee who was choosing what was going to be shown at ICFF in the Pratt Booth. It was chosen for the show, and that was a big turning point. ICFF opened the door to a much broader audience. I walked away from ICFF with probably 200 business cards in my pocket, and a number of different architects who said, “When this is real, let me know. I want this for a building.”

It was great timing for my sister and I. Deb was gathering people for the Pratt Design Incubator. She looked at us, and at this product, and said, “Do you have a business plan? Do you want to be in the Incubator?” I didn’t have a business plan! But, my sister was right there and she did. We had a meeting a week later and were accepted into the Incubator. Then began the process of starting SMIT, Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology, LLC.

And MoMA?

The MoMA show was another big turning point and they actually found us. You know, one doesn’t exactly go after, “How do you get into a MoMA show?” and expect anything to come from it. It’s something I had written off as an impossible thing. After ICFF we went about developing GROW. One of the first things we needed to do was raise some development money. We got a grant, and with that, we agreed to create a blog in order to keep everyone up-to-date on our progress.

Someone working at MoMA stumbled onto the blog. They wanted to get in touch with us, but on the blog we didn’t provide a phone number or e-mail to avoid spam and what not. A persistent MoMA intern read through our entire blog and spotted our uncle’s name. She happened to have gone to Cornell and taken one of his courses! She emailed him, saying “I think I’m looking for your nephew and niece” And he says “Yeah, that’s them,” and forwards us the email. We literally freaked out. What, the MoMA is looking for us?!?

As it turned out, they wanted the GROW concept be a part of their catalog for an upcoming exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind. So we said, “Yeah! We’ll send you images, of course, whatever you need!” And ever-so-slyly also said, “We could make a prototype for the show, if you want to show it.” Not being pushy, but just slid that one under the door.

They deliberated on it, and they eventually said yes. We made an up-to-date prototype and installed it in Feb ‘08. It was a very exciting experience! I have always gone to and been inspired by the shows at the MoMA, and to be putting up a piece in one was truly an honor.

After the show we got some more good news. Paola and her team were considering our piece for the permanent collection. Again, we were overjoyed, but trying to be reserved about it. I think we said, “Oh! Really!? ” They eventually got back to us with a yes. So our piece from the show is now in the MoMA’s permanent collection. A little surreal, and very welcomed!

Did it lead to a lot more architects getting in touch?

Absolutely. GROW and Solar Ivy are products that are able to interact with many different typologies of architecture. So, naturally, architects and developers are interested. Most of the Architects from ICFF were in and around New York, or in the United States, with a good handful of companies from the rest of world. But after the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition opened and its catalog released, our exposure went all over the world.

I also knew from the beginning that architects were going to be the first adopters of GROW. My sister and I brought on Benjamin Howes (Pratt Arch. 2006) as an equity partner in 2007. He’s a great thinker at many levels and can break down the most complex ideas into logical systems. Plus his last name is Howes, pronounced “house” and he’s an architect. What more could we ask for?

I’d like to back up to where you were talking about the grant that you got. I don’t think we’ve talked to anybody who’s taken that route. Was that part of your original plan? How did you make that happen?

GROW came from examining the relationship between humans’ built environment and how nature responds to it. When you build a building, plants will start growing on it. Things start to inhabit it that you don’t want to inhabit it. GROW’s concept was to harness energy in a similar way to what plants do, through a form of biomimicry. Ivy, for example, finds the side of the building where it will get the most sunlight. It creates its own footing. And it has this beautiful kinetic sculpture effect, as wind blows through it across the side of your building. This, in turn, presented a unique opportunity to harness both wind and solar energy.

We applied for the grant to prove out our technology and develop GROW into a product. Since w
e were in the Pratt design Incubator, we were able to utilize Pratt’s grant writers, who found the organization, NCIIA (National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance). NCIIA had an Advanced E-Team grant, which is set up to foster ideas from concepts into actual working prototypes. We used the grant to fund R&D for GROW as well as pay for legal fees involved with filing a utility patent, which we now have.

What’s next?

We recently hired David Rose as our capital campaign adviser. His background is in design innovation (he teaches at MIT’s media lab) and business creation. David has been great in helping us fine tuning our business plan and ushering us into this next round of developing SMIT. We have been pitching to some venture capital firms and angel investors. The process is kind of like finding a dance partner. Some people you find a rhythm with, while some you don’t. It has been a fun process as we have been learning a lot about how this works.

For the past year or so, we’ve been making alliances with emerging solar tech companies, universities, and manufacturing companies to help facilitate our designs. It’s also just really fun to see what others are up to. So, we continue to meet more people and work to move new ideas forward.

We are also going to be part of a few shows coming up. There is a show in Germany which is traveling from Hanover to Berlin in which we will be showing the GROW concept. There is another possible show in Paris later on in 2009. We also have the GROW concept in few book publications due out early ‘09. And, soon, look for a website update that’s happening as we speak: http://s-m-i-t.com

What led you to become a designer?

I remember that as a teenager I tried to put myself into different situations and learn from them. I tried working as a waiter. One night this lady came and opened her change purse while I was cleaning the table. She took her wallet, opened my back pocket, and emptied her change into it. I thought, I’m not doing this for anyone again in my life.

It took me a couple of months to understand her connotation was positive, but that was the end for me. I felt so disgusting. It was terrible. That was really one of the only times I tried to fit into structured work. I realized from a very early age that you can profit from creativity.

I was sure I was going to be an artist. Then slowly, my art became more practical, and my pieces became things which could be used. I started creating objects, which I though was really interesting. I was searching for an art school, and I then thought, let’s take a look at some product design programs. I became so interested in the product design programs that I quit looking at art programs. I totally switched worlds.

Did you know you were going to start your own studio?

Yes, actually. I never really thought about the option of working for someone else.

And how did it start?

Well, I think I got pregnant. I basically starting calling myself “we” even though it was still just me, and pretending I had a studio.

The first serious client who wanted to hire me was a really big deal. I didn’t have a nice a studio to invite them over to. But then they asked me if they could come visit.

I remember coming back and immediately renting a U-Haul, going to Home Depot, buying panels, painting the floor, working the whole night, and inviting a few friends to come and sit around and look busy! I mean, that sort of craziness is a big part of getting your start.

[BBB Folding Sofa]

When and why did you come to New York?

I moved here because it seemed to be the place to go, and ten years ago it was. I fell in love with the city but knew I shouldn’t go to school here. After a year I booked a trip to Europe and traveled through London, Amsterdam, and Paris looking for schools. I found the Design Academy of Eindhoven and fell in love with it. It was a huge change, wonderful.

There’s basically nothing but school over there. I was eager to finish school and move back to New York. Then the chairman of school proposed that I work for her after school, so I took it as an internship. I did my last six months of school combining my thesis with working for her. It was great because I’m really a workaholic! Working for Lee, I had to learn to express someone else’s vision, and it was amazing. But after a few months I was ready to go, and moved to New York. It was really hard. Eindhoven is booming in terms of recognition, and to let go of all those contacts, and come to a new place as a professional was really difficult. I questioned all of it.

How did you go about finding your first clients?

In the beginning, it was just knocking on a lot of doors, sending emails, meeting with people, printing things, sending packages – the usual stuff.

I was very very lucky to meet, very early on, people that supported me a lot. I still don’t know how, but I got a meeting with Paola Antonelli my first weekend in New York. She was amazing and introduced me to dozens of people. To get a recommendation from her was really wonderful. Then, very quickly, I met with Michele Caniato, my agent. While it took about a year for us to start working professionally together, he believed in me from the very beginning.

His very first sentence, after spending five minutes together was, “Well, your work is very interesting but I don’t represent any young designers; come back in twenty years.” It didn’t take twenty, it took a year, with a lot of progress. He was willing to mentor me in the beginning, once a month for a few minutes. And then a few minutes became ten, ten became fifteen, fifteen became twenty, and all of a sudden we were continuing the meeting in the bar.

That was a huge help to me. He introduced me to a whole new level of clients. His representation allows me to be more free, since he handles the more technical, non-design aspects of what we do.

I think for any designer it’s incredibly hard, but also necessary to let go of the smaller tasks as the business grows. How have you dealt with this?

As a designer you should never try and do everything yourself. You should always try to find the appropriate people to consult with, especially when you’re multi-disciplinary. So both adopting a team of people in-house, and professionals outside, was incredibly important for me.

Every time you let go of something, and are aware of it, it’s like cleansing. I think the most difficult thing for me in the past few years was to give up to the computer – which I completely completely abandoned.

It was hard, because I was always the one making the files. But one day I realized that the people coming into this studio knew the programs better then me. The Photoshop versions were accelerating, and I was still stuck years behind. All of a sudden, I was a bit rusty with this program, a bit rusty with that, and I just decided to drop it all and sketch by hand. Now I only click through my presentations.

[Nurai Island]

Can you tell us a little bit about what’s next?

I think that in two words, I wish just… to continue.

Something I realized very early on was that the type of clients we’re looking for are simply not ordinary. They either have to be super cutting-edge, or interested in innovation, or else it’s really not a great fit.

Now for the first time, we are starting to work with a client who is not a luxury client, but is the luxury of the low-end. It’s a completely different challenge, but it’s just as amazing. It’s basically leaders, in their category, that we seek. Anything in-between is just not a good fit.

This year we got an amazing first international commision in architecture. You couldn’t ask for anything better then that. It definitely set a very high standard. While I’m aware there aren’t a lot of islands to design, I hope it will set the standard for future projects, rather than slowing slowly working on smaller projects.

Architecture is really growing in me, and in how the studio works. When I started the studio, I didn’t even realizing that serious architecture was part of industrial design. I thought I would contribute to it in some way, but never envisioned doing an entire project. In the past two years I’ve really tried to educate myself in this field. We’re pitching a few hotels, and a few unique projects which are really innovative. We are also getting more and more into hospitality and interior projects.

[Swarovski Floor Chandelier]

And in terms of product design?

Beyond architectural projects, we have quite a lot of amazing collaborations going on with some Italian ma
nufacturers. Currently we’re doing a colaboration with Cappelini which is very, very exciting. We’re working with Venini on a really interesting project that uses glass leftovers, and pieces damaged in production, to create something new.

We’re also working on a few pieces for Alessi which is really exciting. It’s different working with the Italian clients. Here, we appreciated a certain workflow. If I see that we haven’t made any progress for a week, then we need to change something. There, it is much slower. It drives you crazy sometimes. At the same time, their passion to design is so beautiful that they become your design family, and you treat them like that. You can kind of get upset with them and it’s OK!

How would you describe your signature style?

You know it’s funny, I never tried to force myself into a style. When I started working with Culture and Commerce, Michele wanted me to define my statement. And I thought, I’m too young to define that; I still want to explore. But after putting different pieces of mine next to each other, looking at them, and asking myself what they have in common, I realized that my objects always dealt with movement and transportation.

It’s not that everything I do is collapsible or transformable; some pieces have the transformation occuring as a result of the process, or as the meaning behind it. It’s something I always see as being a part of my vocabulary. It’s the combination of poetry and physics. Nothing that I do or want to do is static. Static freaks me out. Nothing in life is ever static; even if the object is not moving, you are moving around it. Your perception of it is always changing.

[Vase of Phases]

What advice do you have to fellow designers?

When I started this studio I wanted to be multidisciplinary, but it often felt like I was all over the place. In a way it was smart, because as I was throwing a lot of arrows all over the place, some of them hit and some of them didn’t. At the same time, you feel like you’re not focusing on anything. I think the most important thing for me to understand was that the only way to pull through, to continue, to progress, was to not just start but also to close.

Also, in the end, it’s really the intellectual property that counts the most. I totally refuse to work by hours. It’s not a question of how many hours we work on something. I’m not a lawyer. It’s like poetry, you can come up with something in an hour, and it’s the best thing, or sometimes it takes weeks – I just try to value the end result.

So how did your design career begin?

I went to Pratt for industrial design, and graduated in ‘96 with a bachelor’s. After that I was doing barbecue tools and remote-control caddies and spice racks. Middle America stuff. It didn’t suit me; it just wasn’t at all what I wanted out of design. I was working for this company, scratching my head, and questioning what I was doing there.

Before this product design company, I worked for Mark Goetz, who is now a good friend of mine. I learned about furniture design in his studio. I learned that there’s a poetry to it. There’s a kind of spirit and a soul which the work I was doing for this product company didn’t have. I wanted to get in on that. And it was happening abroad. The Milan furniture fair is where it’s at. For furniture, but also for other types of design. It’s kind of the world series for design. I went to Milan to check it out.

If you’re a designer, that’s where you have to be. Even if you’re making lampshades or chopsticks. You need to go to this show. It’s mainly furniture and lighting, but also a lot of objects. I saw the show, fell in love with it, and realized this is what I wanted. It was like… I keep using this baseball reference. If you want to play baseball, you can’t really live in the Czech Republic. You have to be in the States or in Cuba or in Japan. You can’t be in the middle of nowhere. And New York felt to me like the middle of nowhere, so I left to where the action was. Which to me is Denmark and Italy and France. Within a couple of years, I got a Fulbright grant to go study for my masters in Copenhagen.

What then?

I knew that I wanted to work for Zanotta. They are the legends of Italian design and that’s what I wanted to be part of. So I focused on them. I called them when I was in Copenhagen and said, “I want to make designs for you.” And they said, “That’s fine, but so do 300 other people every week. But send us some ideas.” So I put together a presentation, sent it to them, and they really liked it. I thought, “That was easy!”

They made a prototype, but then they decided there was no way they could sell it, so that was the last I heard from them.

What was the piece?

It’s this table, just a frame with a surface. It’s a very conceptual cafe dining table. It’s like a room within a room. It was a new idea, and that’s what they liked. It was what they called a “new typology.” And that is the secret of getting in. If you’re just making a new shape, then they don’t care. They have a million people who can do that. But if you’re offering them something new, that they can make money with, that’s when you’re in. I realized they were responding to this table because it was a novel idea. It wasn’t just more of what they already do.

What happened after grad school?

I moved to Milan in January of 2001, to accelerate getting into the industry. It’s where the factories, the materials, and the people are. I called Zanotta all the time, asking “Can I come in for a meeting? I have all these ideas to show you.” And they, of course, didn’t remember me and would always say no. I kept calling and calling. Finally, in the first week of September, I got through. They told me to come in the next week and show them my stuff. It was great. But I had nothing prepared, at all. So I then had a week to design everything. I worked my ass off.

September 11th happened on that Tuesday. After that, who cares about design? The next day was my meeting. I remember, going into the meeting, that everyone was a little depressed and a little bored with design. It was very awkward.

I showed them my 10 designs. They literally loved them all. Then at the end of the meeting, they said, “We really like it, but we’re not so sure… We get a lot of proposals… You’re kind of young, you’re American… But we’ll call you if we’re interested.” And I thought, well that’s okay. I left the office and I walked across the street and I was waiting for the bus, when they phoned. They were laughing, and they said, “Send us the drawings tomorrow.” They were really having a laugh with me. It was pretty cool.

That was the Freud sofa. It’s asymmetrical and thin, which was brand new at the time. That’s why it happened. Once again, creating a new typology is the secret. That’s one thing that nobody tells you.

Mark Goetz has a brilliant analogy. Say you look in the shop windows, like Capellini or Vitra, and go home and design something in the same spirit and the same language. Mark says that’s like looking up at the stars in the sky. The actual light you’re seeing left the stars a long, long time ago and isn’t there anymore; the stars have moved and changed and maybe burnt out. So if you’re designing based upon what you’re seeing now, you’ve already missed the boat. You need to be ahead of that curve.

What do you consider your biggest success so far?

The Fritz Hansen conference table. It’s turned out to be their most successful piece in 50 years. It was a scary process, because you invest a lot of money, and four years of work, and if it fails, you go out of business. It was a gamble, but it was definitely worth it. I’m really proud of it.

Have you found that designing such a successful piece has opened up a lot of doors to you?

You know, I’m really quick to say not at all. But I think the truth is, it must. It’s just not that visible.

The main benefit is that people gain a little more faith in you. They see that another company invested in you. Fritz Hansen spent millions of dollars on developing and promoting the table. Other companies will see that success and will not be so afraid to invest as well. It helps. For sure. But have I ever just gotten phone calls from somebody offering me a great job? No. You have to fight for everything.

How do you seek out new clients?

I’ll cold call and I’ll pitch work. If I really want to design pots and pans, I’ll design pots and pans for a week. I’ll put it all together and show it with my portfolio. Usually, 9 times out of 10, they say, “We absolutely love them, though there’s no way we’ll make them. But here’s a design brief.” And then you do that job, and you’re in.

Or, if you really love a company, you can study them and see what they need. Then you can make an approach and submit a proposal.

The secret to this whole business is, if they can make money with your design, they’ll do it. It’s not going to be because they like you. It’s because they’ll make money. If you have a smart approach for them, they’ll listen to it.

How does the business end work with your manufacturers? Are they all royalty agreements?

It depends. Some pay small fees up front. If I were to generalize, everything is on a royalty basis, and then the percentage varies from company to company. Certain smaller companies can’t afford to pay as much, so maybe I’ll take a smaller royalty percentage but I’ll ask for a percentage of their company. The percentage might be very small
, it might be 1 or 2 percent.

That’s really interesting. I’d never even thought of a designer getting equity in a company.

It’s a good way to do it because it’s an investment on both sides. I’m saying, “Listen, keep the money in your pocket. I have faith in your company and I want to grow with you. Let’s make it successful.” It ensures both that you have an interest in the company, and they have an interest in you. It creates a long relationship.

A problem I have with this business is that you’re usually hired as a guest. You design for a manufacturer for a year, and then they say goodbye and bring in somebody else. I don’t understand that. When you finish a project, you know the company pretty well. You know everyone there and you understand how they work. And they know the same about you. That’s the point where we could really take this company somewhere. When you have a little bit of equity, then they’re willing to spend more time with you.

Where do you see your studio heading?

In my mind, we’d be doing three to five really good projects a year. And maybe two experimental ones, which we’re not really sure where they’re going to go. That’s what I want out of it. I think that small architecture is going to take hold and become a permanent arm of the company, which I like.

How did you get into small architecture?

When I was living in Milan, I shared an office with an architect. We ended up doing a lot of projects together. That gave me a lot of confidence and an understanding that it’s actually just design, in a different way. Not even in a different way, in a lot of cases. I was making furniture. For me, furniture is an extension of architecture. You start realizing that there’s another layer of design you’re not exploring. That’s why I’m doing these projects. I did a building in Tokyo for Tom Dixon, and that was fun. It explores a lot of the same ideas I have in design.

That’s definitely inspiring, as we want to get into larger work in our studio. We’ve been close to designing an interior and it seems to have completely fallen on its face, which is disappointing.

Oh, they’re always going to fall on their face. Maybe 75% of projects go out the window. Which is fine, as long as you’re getting paid well for the other 25%. For some reason, clients, lousy ones, don’t understand that you need to get paid for what you do. There’s a value to what you do, and there’s a massive expense that goes into what you do. A lot of the lousy ones think you just make sketches and that’s it. I think the hardest part is to prove your value. You have to stand up for yourself. It’s really hard to work when you’re not being paid for your time.

How do you convince clients to pay you up-front?

If a job is paying you, then you have the resources to do it well. If you’re not being paid for it, then you kind of skim through it and the job’s maybe not as good as it should have been. That’s the reason why clients should invest in your time. Maybe $2,000 is all you need up-front to get the job done well. You should ask for that. If you can get them to pay a fee, fine. But I think getting an advance on royalties is most fair. I often hear, “Well, we don’t pay our other designers.” And I say, “Then work with them.” They’ll grudgingly give me the two grand. And then I have the money to do a proper job. Clients usually don’t get that this is what determines you doing a decent job. Who has a bunch of free time laying around to just come up with furniture?

And of course, once they invest in you, you have to do a really good job. Designers who think it’s easy and take a nonchalant approach and don’t show the same respect to companies, are the ones who give designers a bad name.

I feel like that’s the designer stereotype.

It’s a partnership between you and the manufacturer. You’re making something for them. That’s the way I see it. Of course, many people don’t.

You’ve moved from furniture to bigger scale works. Do you also do smaller pieces? What’s your spectrum?

Yes. Absolutely anything. I’ve done some jewelry and I do a lot of tabletop stuff. I’ve designed a scent, which is in the works. I like doing stuff which is not conventional. How many tables are you going to do? I’d rather mix it up and design a boat and design a birthday cake and design whatever I can.

Do you have any advice for young designers starting out?

- If you’re going to work with a new company, go to their factory as soon as you can. Most people don’t think to do that. They just start sketching. Go to the factory, learn what’s going on, talk to the guys in the factory, and see what’s up. Right away, you’ll learn something about what’s possible. You’re working for the machines. And get to know the people there, because those are the people who are going to be making your stuff. You need to have a relationship with them.

- Get out there and get to know as many people as you can. Sooner or later, these people will work their way up in business. It’s really important to meet a lot of people. I think a lot of young designers don’t that. They tend to stick to themselves.

- Stick to what you’re good at. Don’t expect to be a brilliant business person overnight. And the lawyer, and the accountant, and accounts payable and accounts receiving… It’s too much to take on as an individual. Take small steps, in the direction you want. It’s your company. Things can quickly start to go in a direction that you didn’t want them to go in. Contracts, and terms, and taxes, all that stuff is part of your business and you’re going to have to deal with it, but I wouldn’t make it a bigger deal than it is. Bring in people who are specialists and who are good at it. The longer you’re in it, the easier it gets, because you know more and more people.

We’ve found that the deeper you get into the business end of things, the harder it is to put everything aside and get back to the creative place where great design happens.

Honestly, I think that’s an exceptional challenge that creative businesses have. I spend maybe 80% of my days doing reports, papers, emails, nonsense. Maybe as my business grows I can afford to hand more of that off to other people. Then again, the best business people that I’ve ever met are really creative. They have a beautiful way to look at business. You can do that too. You shouldn’t run a design studio like you were running a supermarket. I don’t think I run my business conventionally, but it’s working.