PAG. 68 LEATHER, BRICKS AND COLORS
GA: I understand that you were commissioned by Fendi to work in the main office in Italy, right? SK: Yes, but this was just a project. And it will be realized, we don’t know yet. Fendi can give you dates, maybe. First, we may concentrate on this one. GA: One of the things that really interest me about your projects is that you exhibit the materials as they are, in their raw state. So how did you manage to get in touch with this luxurious brand and convinced them to present raw materials? SK: Rudy (Weissenberg) and Rodman (Primack) proposed Fendi to work with us for this project. They were actually the middlemen who told them, “Hey, we know two designers that could make a good job, because they love the material as well; they love the details, the artisans and to innovate.” Rudy and Rodman had several things in common with Fendi, so they made a good combination. Actually, Fendi told us to work with the selleria, because this is the bovine leather they always work with. That’s their leather, their color. We were looking for other material that could have an interesting dialogue with leather. We have worked with leather before, so we knew already a lot about it, and we knew the artisans that we could work with, and then we were looking for something that could break the softness of the leather, so we made these bricks. It’s just a standard brick. We took it and tried to process this to show the elaboration and how you can make a luxury item. Same with the corrugated metal inside, something everyone knows, right? So, we take something very common and change it or ask the craftsmen to modify it into something new or innovative. I think Fendi understood this very well, because they take normal leather or fur and transform it into something very beautiful from the hands of very skilled people. Because they know this process, they could understand our proposal very well. SK: Each brick is glazed. It was a whole production process we developed for this project. Because of this, every stone is a little bit different. GA: Yeah, that’s right. SK: That's what we really liked about this. We had two archaic materials with a long human tradition, leather and brick. With today's possibilities, we tried to do something new and innovative. That was really our challenge. GA: To develop authentic things but with basic elements. SK: Yes. With very archaic elements and materials that everybody knows but going a step further. SK: This is metal on the inside and we covered it with leather. What we like to do is play with the leather that they sent us, so sometimes we use the frontside and sometimes we use the backside. I mean it is the same leather, the backside is a different color than the frontside. This, by dyeing the leather and, depending on the surface, it takes a different color. GA: What about the complete installation, what was the purpose of giving a speech to the public? SK: I think that the written topic was not really to give joy
Photo Paola Caputo
Interview Greta Arcila, Miami correspondent *Original audio transcript
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to the audience, but that's what we always try to do, right? As we are part of society, we have to give something back to everybody in our daily life. That’s what we’re trying to do. We love colors. We're from Zurich, a very gray place, so it's good to bring colors into life. The whole team that was working with these colors was very happy, because we had so many colors around us and that helped to improve the mood. I think that the situation with society is another issue, because what we try to do is really work with the artisans, continue the relationship with them and explain the value of their work and their knowledge, because if we forget what they know we lose all our history. GA: Speaking of your relationship with Fendi. Fendi is known for luxury, but a new kind of luxury, the kind that you can give to others to have, in a good way, a good life. SK: You end up using something, say, handmade and you know someone had to spend time creating it. Actually, I'm using someone's time, aren't I? This person's knowledge was focused on the leather treatment he learned over generations, and this continues. At Fendi they cultivate heritage very well, but they're not conservative. They liked this collaboration so much. I was quite impressed seeing that they are really prepared, based on their knowledge, to take the next step and completely open to take the risk of trying something new. We always think these big companies can't move so fast, because they're big, right? But that's not true. They really want to be open to challenge new things and new techniques. Product design is not their field, but they could easily understand what we want to do and support us. GA: Talking about your work, because I've seen a lot of your work, and I like that you're always experimenting with different materials and different ways of exhibiting: a chair is not a classic chair, it has different shapes, it's like a game. How do you manage to get that kind of design language? Was it an exploration? SK: Yeah, I think Lovis and I grew up together in a visual language. We always worked one-on-one. We always built models out of cardboard. Our studio is a disaster. It's really a studio, a workshop. So, we build a lot; we have assistants, but we build a lot ourselves. Because we have to see it in reality. We're really proportion nerds. We say, "Oh no, this should be a little smaller and we cut it out. No, no, it has to be taller." We have a lot of dialogue when we start working on getting the shape. Before the shape we always talk a lot
about the idea. Very good goal, too. Because there are two of us, we have a lot of discussion and we have a common brain full of ideas. For example, working with bricks was in our heads for a long time and there was never the right combination to come out. And then, all of a sudden, we said, "You know what, I think that's it, we should work with the brick." Things come together and we try to... first there's the concept and then there's the form. GA: How did you manage to find new materials? SK: Well, just work through life with your eyes open. I mean, it's nice to be able to travel, so in each country you find different material solutions, how they are used, how the details and connections are made. It is not yet globalized, which I am very happy about, the fact that things still have their own country. Their own way of building street corners or street signs so you feel like you have something you can study, you know? Europe is becoming a little bit the same. You close your eyes, because you know it. It's good that even if you go to Eastern Europe and the whole south, things are a little different. GA: It’s completely different, yeah. SK: You can study, or you can see different ways of using things, right? GA: Well, to finish the interview, what were your expectations of the installation? SK: In the end we hope that everything arrives, that everything fits, because you never see all this in your studio. Things fit... we don't have a studio where we can build things like this all the time. And also talk about important topics like crafts and heritage and talk a lot about meeting interesting people with whom we can talk about the human-based future. We have the decision in our hands; we are not dominated by any software that tells us what to do. We have free minds. I think that every day we can start with this dialogue about our future, because we have to face it and we have to decide.