Discussions with designers and architects – Design Talks were established last year at the Furniture Fair and were proved as direct hit. Their objective is to feature to the audience in the original way professional experiences of furniture industry creators. The attendees speak about the projects they are currently working on, about the situation in the furniture industry, the operation systems of the industry, the trends and the market, but they also announce the design scene events in the future.
On the first day of the Furniture Fair, their experiences were mentioned by young designers, this year’s exhibitors – Dunja Palček, founder of Štap&kanap studio from Novi Sad and Uroš Janković, founder of Wood Line studio from Požarevac, who spoke about the projects they are currently working on, experiences, challenges, motivation, functioning, creative blockade overcoming, the relation of designer and client, compromise. The audience was mostly interested what motivated these young people to design and manufacture themselves.
Uroš Janković, Wood Line:
– When you do things “in house”, you can control deadlines, quantities and quality, so I had no doubt if someone else should manufacture what I as designer thought out. Thus, I started manufacturing. It was important to me to transfer my idea to the final product, to transfer the story and the concept. In your own production, you can find the real limit between the good design and industrial production.
– Already as a student, I realized everything was evaluated, just the furniture remained frozen. Not in form, but substantially. The furniture remained in a vacuum. We produce handmade author furniture and when you simplify this, you come to the conclusion people work for people, this is a live thing. You take from the using value of an item its functioning and then you come to the desired form, explained Uroš Janković.
Dunja Palček, Štap&kanap:
– At furniture design and production, the objective is not to accomplish something in an easier way, but create something as you planned. This was one of the key reasons that I wanted to manufacture the things I design. Furniture manufacturing under the home conditions is a challenge, but so far it is great for me”.
– When I begin designing, I always start from the function, from the way an item should be used. It seems to me design begins at a moment missing this aspect, the most important one, since there is no point if something is not functioning. Thus, this is my starting point, said Dunja Palček.
