Hasta La Ideas

Loebach and some “failed experiments” in his Brooklyn studio

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

Name: Paul Loebach

Occupation: I’m a furniture and product designer.

Location: Brooklyn

Current projects: I’m just finishing up a watering can design I did for an American brand called Kontextür, and I’m working on some new lighting with the American company Roll & Hill. And there are always a couple confidential new projects in the works.

Mission: My philosophy as a designer is to improve the lives of society as a whole by bringing value and meaning to the objects that inhabit our material world.

The X3 Watering Can‘s handle and pour spout are a single metal tube, bent three times.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? When I was really young. I remember playing with my toys and thinking about ways that they could be improved and wanting to redesign them. Eventually that evolved into my awareness of the field of industrial design.

Education: I went to Rhode Island School of Design, studying industrial design. Graduated in 2002.

First design job: Right after I graduated, I moved to New York City to do an apprenticeship for a furniture designer named John Davies. Basically I did full-scale drawings of wood furniture under his guidance. I did that for a year, at which point I branched off and started my own design business.

Who is your design hero? I don’t know if I have any one particular hero. Anytime I open up a design book or magazine, I just have respect for all those people that have made their mark in that way, because I know how much effort, thoughtfulness, patience, and stamina it takes to get there. So the people that are out there doing it and making it happen in general are my design heroes.

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