Interview: Sam Hecht Industrial Facility’s new products were among our Salone highlights this year. We talk to one half of the duo...
notable for being a solid wood chair that stacks in large multiples. The duo were inspired by the classic 40/4 Stacking Chair by David Rowland, where Rowland strove to reduce the structure to its barest elements, keeping it light and functional. When interviewed by Disegno recently, Hecht said of the piece “Our idea was that we wanted something humble that could last for a century.”
Industrial Facility were founded in 2002 by Kim Colin and Sam Hecht, since then the duo have created countless products across all spheres of design. Their clients are a broad church ranging from Established & Sons to Muji and electronics brands such as LaCie. They have even designed a piano for Yamaha. But crucially, any Industrial Facility product has certain qualities that make it identifiable as their work. There is their finely distilled aesthetic of course, but more importantly it’s the ethos underpinning their practice. What they call ‘a duty to ensure the project has not just commercial credibility but also usefulness, appropriateness and longevity.’
We spoke with Sam about their other two releases, the Run Collection for Emeco and also their work with Oral B under the umbrella of Future Facility. So tell us about Run, the new collection for Emeco, where did your inspiration come from? Was it a strict brief from Emeco or did you come to them with an idea of what you wanted to do?
At this year’s Salone the designers had three new pieces on show, the first Tronco for Mattiazzi is
SH: As with a lot of our projects, they are often 38