DESIGNERS OF THE YEAR // FURNITURE
Who do you admire most as a designer?
Thaddeus Wolfe in glass, Takuro Kuwata in ceramics, GT2P for their work with lava, Steven Haulenbeek and Max Lamb for their experiment-based practices.
If you weren’t a designer, what job would you be doing?
Aiding in the recovery of our oceanic health somehow.
What classic object is most in need of a redesign?
The drill. Most drills these days look like fancy toothbrushes or razors, with angular rubber and bright colours. Just a good drill with metal casing, a good motor and a rightangle shell so you can use the drill body as a guide for plumb drilling.
What’s your dream project?
Designing a chair out of mushrooms that anyone in the world can grow on their own for less than $5.
Q&A
With JEFF MARTIN
What do people often get wrong about design?
That a designer has to stay in one lane. There is nothing stopping someone from playing in fine art, design, architecture or whatever else at the same time.
one to watch: furniture design
Things can feel tense when you enter the New Format Studio workshop—in the best way possible. “The interesting thing about design to me is that it’s a set of parameters. You have to work within what the market will actually purchase, but you also have to work within what you feel good about creating,” says founder Henry Norris. “There’s a tension between those two things, and I think that’s what draws me to it.” We first featured the Vancouver-based designer in our January issue, and since then Norris has continued to hone his gift for putting an artful spin on timeless furniture designs. For New Format’s Plano Bar cabinet, he curved acid-wash glass—which gave this familiar hard material a surprisingly soft feel—into a handsome vintage-modern storage piece (right). “Once you curve a standard building material,” he explains, “it takes on a much different light.”—Jusneel Mahal
Harry Bohm
New Format Studio
8 4 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 / westernliving.ca
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