designer profile: federico churba

Where was your favorite place to live?
Home sweet home! I live in a small cosy house with a large green garden in the surroundings of Buenos Aires, and love it!

What are your sources of inspiration?
The surroundings… I love to go around with my camera and take pictures of many things, and usually work with them trying to find connections and clues of identity. Then, trying to convert them into pieces of contemporaneous furniture.

What do you drive?
Different choices, depending on the weather and what I am wearing! but mostly my 1957 Vespa.

What one item do you wish you owned?
A house on the beach, definitively.

What are your interests outside of design?
I love to play the piano, but I believe nobody feels the same at home!

Who are you design icons?
Many… but if you force my, I would Vico Magistretti.

Form vs. function?
It depends on the project.

Your personal decorating style is ?
At my office? we change the wallpapers every time we work on new projects.

What’s your favorite element/possession?
My piano. It is old and sounds very bad, but I don´t think I could change it for a new one.

What was/is your biggest indulgence?
The movie theatre around the corner of my studio.

Do you have one low budget decorating tip?
Throw away everything you don´t need—really cheap.

What’s the best career advice you ever received? Ever gave?
Don´t become a lawyer.

designer profile: manuel saez

Where was your favorite place to live?
Brooklyn. It is a true multicultural experience. It has the small friendly neighborhood feeling and quick access to Manhattan and all the good things new York can offer.

What’s your favorite room in your home?
The kitchen. Big and practical!

What are your sources of inspiration?
Everyday things. Sculpture, art, science shows, nature… Depends… Yesterday I found a chewed up dog stick at the park and I am going to do a sculpture with it.

What one item do you wish you owned?
Phillip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan.

What are your interests outside of design?
Sports—I play rugby and squash. Also like motorcycles and bicycles.

Who are you design icons?
In terms of product the Eames aluminum series. As far as designers I like Phillip Stark, always criticized but he knows how to control what people feel…

Form vs. function?
Yes! The true is Balance between them, in the context the design will be used.

In your opinion, what is the best designed item of all time?
The screw! Not big task can be accomplished without it being involved at some point.

Your personal decorating style is _____?
Minimalist. However I also like my girlfriend’s style. She is an interior designer that uses textures and earthy tones to create a feeling of cozy comfort.

What’s your favorite element/possession?
A vintage long, black leather coat I bought on the street in Malaga Spain.

What was/is your biggest indulgence?
Good food and great company. I love to cook and entertain friends.

Do you have one low budget decorating tip?
White paint! Anything looks good in white spaces and objects…with white you can hide or highlight.

What’s the best career advice you ever received? Ever gave?
Received: you need to exercise some restraint!!!—Niels Diffrient Gave: do what you love and be patience.

designer profile: amanda ip of slate design

Where was your favorite place to live?
This is tough. I’ve lived in Singapore, London and Sydney—but I think Chicago wins. It has the perfect mix of everything you could possibly want in a city.

What’s your favorite room in your home?
My living room. I absolutely love the way the city looks at night out the floor to ceiling windows. Not only is it a great open space for entertaining and, despite it really not being that big, it’s managed to accommodate people in the double digits for Lollapalooza sleepovers.

It’s also full of things that I’ve made or collected over the years that totally paint a picture of who I am. One of my favorites is a black stained Baltic birch plywood bench I made in college. It’s the first piece of furniture I designed that someone tried to buy.

What’s your favorite element/possession?
My Absolut Vodka ad collection. Their old print ads were just so cool. My obsession began in 7th grade and 12 years later, I’m still on the hunt! For years my collection of about 200 sat in plastic sleeves in a huge 3 ring binder. Now my favorites are framed and proudly cover an entire wall of my living room.

Do you have one low budget decorating tip?
Collect something and display it.

What’s your personal decorating style?
Eclectic modern…in limited colors of black, white, beige and green.

What was/is your biggest indulgence?
Bacon.

Who are your design icons?
Frank Gehry. Andy Warhol. Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies van der Rohe. Zaha Hadid.

What are your sources of inspiration?
Everything and anything around me… but there is nothing more incredible than traveling somewhere new and exploring foreign cultures.

In your opinion, what is the best-designed item of all time?
Matches. The ability to create fire whenever you want with a single strike with something that fits into your pocket? Mind blowing. And they smell so good.

What’s the best career advice you ever received? Ever gave?
My Dad, when I briefly considered going to college for business instead of industrial design…things are not a straight line. You can’t predict where you will go or what you’ll end up doing some day. You can only do what makes you happy, every single day.

You may study one thing, find yourself a job in another, meet someone or go somewhere that leads you down a totally different path and before you know it, you may not know how you even ended up where you are.

But, however unimaginable or unattainable your dream may have been from the beginning, you only get there in the end by loving what you do and following all those little paths.

designer profile: diana lu of slate design

Who are your design icons?
To name a few… Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Hans Wegner…

What one item do you wish you owned?
A pair of Verner Panton’s Bachelor chairs.

Form vs. Function?
Both. ­Good design cannot exist without the other.

What do you drive?
A Mini Cooper S.

What are your sources of inspiration?
Everything. People, places, art, music, fashion, materials, buildings, life.

Where was my favorite place to live?
I’ve traveled many places but never lived anywhere else—Chicago’s a great place to come home to.

What’s your favorite room in your home?
The bedroom. I live in a first floor flat where adjoining rooms lack sunlight. So I recently swapped the bedroom and the living room and absolutely love waking up to the view of our garden.

In your opinion, what is the best designed item of all time?
The clothespin. Some things are simple—while other things are beautiful—the clothespin is both.

What are your interests outside of design?
Travel, bike riding, ping pong, cats, video/board games and getting ready to be a new mom.

What’s your signature?
My design style—honest forms with unexpected details meant to be discovered and make you smile.  

What’s your personal decorating style?
Creating a space that looks lived in using vintage and modern pieces—simple, clean and comfortable.

What’s your favorite element/possession?
My blanket from when I was 5.  It’s #1 on my list of things to grab if the place were to go up in flames.

milan 2011: designers and artists

Just when we think it’s presidents and economists who shape our world, we return to Milan for the Salone and remember it’s really the designers and artists.

Designers who solve problems through ingenious design and artists who add beauty—who provoke thought through compelling imagery, music, prose—while making our world more awesome.

We’re constantly thrilled and amazed by their ability to imagine a lamp that’s not just a casing for electric light, a bookcase that not just shelves— but one that’s breathtaking, sexy.

And while we’re extremely grateful to be working with creative and talented designers and artists, we remember the engineers who make their ideas a reality and just how equally important it is to laugh… to take fifteen minutes and four euros to enjoy a toy a designer created for us to play with.

We can choose to think of a swing as rope and a piece of wood or an old tire… or our castle fortress as a simple cardboard box… it’s all in allowing ourselves to imagine possibilities, and to enjoy them.