Hasta La Ideas

This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Sam Hecht of Industrial Facility.

Name: Benjamin Hubert

Occupation: Industrial designer

Location: London

Current projects: Most things we can’t talk about, but we’re working on everything from furniture and lighting to smaller desktop objects and interiors and installations and wallcoverings. It’s a very large range.

Mission: To create objects that solve problems and are innovative.

Launched during last September’s London Design Festival, Ripple is the world’s lightest timber table—it weighs only 9 kilograms, or just under 20 pounds.

Ripple is made by corrugating plywood through pressure lamination, a process developed by Hubert with the Canadian manufacturer Corelam.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? When I was 18. It was a decision at school to continue studying design rather than art, and I made it by choosing a course at university in design.

Education: I studied industrial design and technology at Loughborough University.

First design job: Being a design intern at a company called DCA

Who is your design hero? I don’t really think about things like that. We tend to think about things outside of our industry, and we don’t focus too heavily on what people have done and what they’re doing. So I wouldn’t say we have a hero.

Hubert’s new Pelt collection for De La Espada includes a chair, stools, and a shelving system, all of which feature a thin plywood shell wrapped around a solid ash frame.

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This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. We’ll be posting a new interview every other Tuesday.

Name: Brendan Ravenhill

Occupation: I’m a designer—everything from products to furniture to lighting to interiors.

Location: Los Angeles

Current projects: We self-produce four distinct lighting families that vary in range from sconces to chandeliers, and from elegant to practical. We’re developing a new family of lights for winter 2014, in response to a number of inquiries we’ve gotten for even more dramatic fixtures that are designed to be adjustable. We hope to preview the line this fall.

We’re also currently designing barstools, tables, banquettes and chairs for several restaurant projects, and developing a new cast bronze bracket that can be used in a number of different configurations. The bracket grew out of a meeting with a talented metal caster here in L.A. When we find a local manufacturer to work with, it often starts a whole creative process of figuring out what we can make using that individual’s particular manufacturing skill and capability.

Mission: What really motivates our work is how material properties and manufacturing methods can drive a design and an aesthetic. We try to celebrate that and bring that out in the work, rather than trying to hide it. So I’d say my mission is to create objects that have a kind of inherent truth to them, that speak about all the various parts that create the whole.

The Black Counter Stool is the newest member of Ravenhill’s Black Chair family

The Hood Chandelier—one of Ravenhill’s latest lighting products—uses white oak, polyethylene shades, a brass wiring hub and cloth-covered wiring.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I have an undergrad degree in sculpture, and for years I was a wooden boat builder. I went back to grad school for design because I loved building things but I was really attracted to the idea of being able to mass-produce objects and furniture. So I went to grad school in 2007 with the idea of being a designer, and I started my own company soon after graduating in 2009.

Education: I went to the Rhode Island School of Design for a master’s in industrial design.

First design job: While I was in grad school, I designed a bottle opener that got licensed by Areaware. The bottle opener was one of my thesis objects—my thesis at RISD was about investigating objects that, through wear and use, develop a patina and increase in value. The bottle opener was a simple object that I created to investigate some of those material properties. I made eight and gave them out to friends, and one made its way to Areaware and they picked it up for licensing. That was my first “licensed object” job.

Then when I moved out to L.A. in 2010, I got a job to design a restaurant, because the owner had seen my bottle opener in a magazine. That’s what jump-started my business—some of my earliest work that I’m now still producing came out of that project.

Who is your design hero? I have a lot of design heroes, but someone who I really look up to his Nathaniel Herreshoff. He was a wooden boat builder who not only had amazing mastery of form, in making really beautiful and fast boats, but he also had his own manufacturing capabilities in Rhode Island, where he constantly pushed materials and methodologies in boat building. So as much as he was an innovator in new forms, he was also an innovator in how to create those forms. He was an early and huge influence on my design career.

Inside Ravenhill’s studio in his Los Angeles home

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This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. We’ll be posting a new interview every other Tuesday.

Name: Piet Hein Eek

Occupation: Designer, producer, distributor, architect. I don’t like doing only one thing, and I like processes in general very much. I’m always very keen on the whole process, from the idea to the consumer.

Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Current projects: We’re always doing different projects, either for customers or for ourselves—for the collection or for “free work,” as we call it. It’s work that’s not specifically commercial but more intellectually challenging and so on.

Right now we’re working on the Waste Project, with tables and chairs and other things that we make from waste material left over from our own production. This project started in 2000, but we’re still working on it on many different levels. One of the new things is a Waste Waste 40×40 series—so it’s made of the waste of the Waste Project. Instead of the leftovers determining the size and the image of the product, we cut everything down to 40-by-40-millimeter blocks. It’s a totally different approaching to using the leftovers, and we’re using almost everything because it’s a very small size. And that provides beautiful new objects.

Mission: I always try to make the world a little bit better—but I always feel a little incompetent saying that. Because if you’re a designer, you create products to be consumed. And one of the biggest issues in the world, of course, is our senseless way of consuming. So I try to communicate that the way we design, produce, consume, et cetera might be much more clever.

Above and below: an armchair and table from Eek’s new Waste Waste 40×40 collection

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? Well, as a child I was always building things, especially outside—huts and cabins and things in the trees. So the fact that I became a designer, and specifically one who is producing his own products, that was from childhood.

Education: Design Academy Eindhoven

First design job: The first design commissions I got were all friends of my mother. And with the third one I got in a little bit of a quarrel, and I promised myself never to work again for friends or relatives. Because you give it everything you have and then in the end they’re still not convinced that they have a good bargain, and they start arguing. So I stopped working for people who are close to me.

Who is your design hero? If I have to choose one, it would be Jean Prouvé. Out of all the designers, I feel the most close to his work. When I look at his work I always think, “If you gave me the same situation, I would love to have made that!” He was like an engineer, and he had his own factory, so in the end he was working with the possibilities he had at that moment, and that’s quite similar to my situation.

The workshop of Eek’s headquarters in Eindhoven, in a converted Philips factory

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Name: James Carnes

Occupation: I am the Global Creative Director for Sport Performance Design at Adidas.

Location: I currently live right outside Herzogenaurach, Germany. But I also still live in Portland, Oregon. I just officially moved over to Germany with my family, but I still go back and forth.

Current projects: We just finished everything to do with the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Now we’re ramping up for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. So there are a lot of new high-performance projects on our table, in terms of footwear and apparel and working with new country federations, which is always really cool.

There’s tons of other stuff. We’ve got a new line coming for Stella McCartney. We introduced a technology called Boost this year, and that’s growing. We’re also doing a lot of new collaboration projects, where we’re bringing in designers from different industries—whether it’s architects, industrial designers, graphic designers—and working with them, just getting a different point of view on what sport means to them and how they see sports products.

Mission: I would say, right now, the thing that I live by is making the future accessible through meaningful design. I think people need to be able to relate to totally new ideas, and design is really the interface that does that. It takes something that’s completely unfamiliar and makes it familiar, and it brings something that’s totally rare and makes it feel close to you. My mantra right now is: The world needs intuitive design.

For its Energy Boost line, Adidas replaced the EVA foam found in most running shoe midsoles with a Boost foam made from thermoplastic polyurethane granules fused into a cushioning layer.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? It was basically right before college. I had three main tracks that I was considering: Science and medicine—which, in a very stereotypical way, was what my parents would have loved—archaeology or the visual arts. I didn’t really know that I wanted to be a designer; I just knew that I wanted to go in that direction. And at the last minute, as I was applying to different universities, I pulled together a portfolio and included it in my applications. So that’s when I decided—as I was applying.

Education: I went to the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, and got a B.F.A. with a focus on industrial design.

First design job: That’s a funny one. I didn’t grow up with a ton of money, and I used to make toys from stuff I basically pulled from the trash. So I would put together toy guns for me and my friends, or put together other contraptions. It was pretty well known in my neighborhood. And at some point this one friend’s dad came to the house. I thought I was in trouble. But he came to ask if I would make toys for his two sons’ birthdays, which were a couple of days apart. So I ended up making these futuristic bazookas for the kids down the street, and that’s when I realized, “Oh my god, this could actually be a job.”

Who is your design hero? I like the extremes—so I like inventors and I like stylists equally. I’m really a fan of Zaha Hadid and the Bouroullec brothers. But I’m also pretty crazy about Tom Ford, and I think Miuccia Prada is amazing. And as far as up-and-coming guys that are peer heroes—I’m a big fan of Alexander Taylor, and I also really like Jay and Ed from BarberOsgerby.

The Adidas headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany

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This is the fifth installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. We’ll be posting a new interview every other Tuesday.

Name: Paul Cocksedge

Occupation: Designer

Location: East London

Current projects: It’s very varied. We’re doing furniture and sculptural lamps and a very interesting architectural project in London. We’re doing bicycle accessories and a mass-produced, self-initiated electronics project. We have an exhibition opening at Friedman Benda in New York in September. So the scales vary a lot, and the projects vary a lot as well.

Mission: I think it’s what all designers want to do, really. Designers want to work on original projects that move us forward a little bit, that make people see the world in different ways, and that bring some joy and wonder and enlightenment somehow. That’s what I do.

During last year’s London Design Festival, Cocksedge created Auditorium, a temporary installation hand-woven from nylon wire. Photos by Mark Cocksedge.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I was about 17 or 18. It was when I realized that I couldn’t become an airline pilot—because I realized that I was actually scared of flying. Honestly. I had studied mathematics and physics; I was prepping for that world. And then I started bringing the arts into my world, and it slowly became design.

Education: I went to university and studied industrial design innovation. And then I went to the Royal College of Art, and it was almost about unlearning all of that and figuring out your own process. The Royal College was a beautiful moment in my career. It was under Ron Arad and these fantastic tutors, really beautiful minds and free thinkers. It changed my life.

First design job: I’ve never had a design job apart from the one that I created for myself.

Who is your design hero? You know, it’s interesting. You see work by designers, and that’s one side of the story. But then when you meet that person, that’s the other side of the story. For me, I need to like the work and like the person, because the work that I really admire comes from within people’s souls. They’re not designing because they’re told they have to design something; they’re designing because they have this burning desire to create something, and that comes from a completely different place than the everyday-job idea of being a designer. So people like Ron Arad, Ingo Maurer—these kinds of people guide me.

Above: Cocksedge in his London studio. Below: Change the Record, a smartphone loudspeaker made from recycled vinyl LPs.

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