Business, science, innovation
187
Furniture made in Poland Polish furniture design has a long and respected history. It continues today with successes by a younger generation of designers. Przemysław ‘Mac’ Stopa is a visionary designer inspired by colour, geometry and 3D. He is the founder of the Warsaw studio Massive Design and the winner of a record number of prestigious Red Dot Product Design Awards, the ‘design Oscars’ . In 2015 he won three Red Dot awards, for the Pelikan chair, the Breaking Form collection of modular floor coverings, and the Hybrid Collection, decorations created by combining various materials on a glass surface. Agata Kulik-Pomorska and Paweł Pomorski founded the studio Malafor, where they create furniture referencing the concepts of recycling, ecology, and repurposing of commonly available materials and objects. In
2012 they received a Red Dot for their Blow sofa design from inflated recycled paper bags. Oskar Zięta is also known for inflated furniture. He created an advanced technology for ‘pumping’ furniture out of metal sheets. His furniture is displayed at locations like the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Wired magazine called Zięta’s designs ‘the furniture of the future’ , and indeed in the future they could even appear on Mars. Seriously. The first design has already been drawn up for a base station on another planet, with a skeleton made from Zięta’s deformed profiles •
Armchair created by the Polish designer Roman Modzelewski in 1958 from a polyester, from the formal perspective was a world-class example of a fully formed, homogeneous organic shell seat • FiDU An original technology developed by designer and architect Oskar Zięta used to manufacture lightweight and durable furniture and sheetmetal constructions. The Danish firm Hay has launched production of the Plopp stool (above) for which Zięta received a Red Dot, the most prestigious award in the design world. FiDU enables production of extremely durable elements from very thin sheets, and the material can also be freely shaped (rigth) •