Design Chats - The widespread Dane
Originally I met Kia when I was only two years old - yup already then did I have an eye for spotting design talent.
Through wondrous ways we met in London again and the crazy talkative fellow Dane has some pretty interesting projects under her sleeve. I had a chat with her about her widespread work and her recent adventure in stretching her creative process.
What is your background and where do you come?
I’m from Denmark, where I lived my first 5 years in a Copenhagen suburb in this hippie-ish social ‘experiment’, Farum Midtpunkt, where families with different social background lived side by side in these huge apartment complexes. Then my family moved to Copenhagen where I lived until moving to London three and a half years ago. Both my parents are architects and the older generations were sculptors and architects, so being aware of my surroundings is in my blood I guess.
I really didn’t know what I wanted to ‘be’, it took me quite a long shopping spree within all sorts of creative fields, including 1 year at the Danish school of Architecture and three rejections from the Danish Design school, before I started as a goldsmith apprentice. I worked every night long into the wee hours on my own jewellery projects. I applied for a MA at The Royal College of Art with these projects and got a spot. I didn’t do much jewellery there though. I continued shopping around in the different workshops, getting my hands on as many different projects as possible. It was here I invented ‘The Louver Twisting Comb’, which gave me an InnovationRCA fellowship, a post-graduate innovation department for start-ups, and I’m still working with the college to get the invention to market. Alongside with that I’ve made a new jewellery collection, working with material innovation, developing a new idea developing method and what else may come my way.
Tell me about your project The Louver Twisting Comb?
The Louver Twisting Comb is a patent pending, adjustable, cordless screen system. It’s perfect for the use as a new type of window blinds, but has many other application possibilities as well. Room dividers, adjustable shelving systems or building facades just to name a few. The system eliminates the problems incurred by conventional window blinds. On a practical level the blind helps to control the indoor climate, however it has the additional elegant interaction with the transmitted light. Instead of just shutting out the light using regular blinds, The Louver Twisting Comb provides increased filtering control, introducing light and shadow as a decorative component within the room. Through the ability to modify the screen in sections from both the top and bottom the system provides sophisticated privacy settings without compromising the incoming light. That’s the long way of saying that it’s just really nice.
What does a normal working day look like?
I don’t really have a normal working day. It depends on the project I’m working on. When I’m working on my main project, the Louver Twisting Comb, I’m at my office space in Battersea or workshop in South Kensington. I often have meetings with people that can help me get the project moving or I’m working on a new prototype. I spend a lot of my time by the computer, so I’m quite flexible – which also makes it quite hard to keep a solid routine. And one day I found myself at a meeting on Damien Hirst’s ex-wife’s houseboat, eating dates with a Saudi Arabian sheikh and one of the founders of the Gumball race, discussing chinese production possibilities. So I really never know what to expect.
Tell me about your most recent adventure?
I just returned from a month residency in Jørn Utzon’s house, Can Lis, in Mallorca. The house was amazing. You always had the feeling of not really knowing if you were inside or outside. Me and my friend, architect Mikas Emil Jakobsen went there to work on an idea development process.
It’s a way of getting ideas through making a model a day (or more) based on a given starting point – in this case Can Lis – and see where it would take us. There was no goal. The whole idea with the process is that by not having a goal you will set your ideas free and you will reach corners of creativity you didn’t knew you could reach. This process is how I originally developed the Louver Twisting Comb, when I studied at RCA. At Can Lis we explored the house and our models was based on being in the building and how they could interact with the light. We ended up doing these huge screens of cling film between the columns creating a really interesting double screen and projecting onto them. The double screen distorts the image and gives it somewhat of a 3D effect.
The residency also presented an opportunity to test my latest prototype of the Louver Twisting Comb in a house that has been especially designed using light as an essential structural element, and therefor so perfectly suited to my work.
What do you hope will come from this trip/project/prototypes?
We were in this house, where we were not allowed to change anything, but by making these see-through screens we could project objects and even other rooms and spaces onto the screens, thereby creating new temporary spaces. Now we’re working on using the screens to merge architectural classics into each other and create a super-house. It’s not as straightforward as we thought, especially as we live in different countries.
Surprisingly I have gotten really positive feedback from musicians, who see big potential using it on tour and in videos. But right now it’s quite flammable… We need to work that out!
How do you think as a designer you benefit from going away from your everyday surroundings?
These opportunities of getting away means everything. Everybody should do it more. It can seem stressful, impossible and expensive when you are your own boss, as you feel like you’re cheating on other projects and not doing what you’re supposed to do. But now that I’ve been away from my regular workspace for 4 months, working both from Denmark, Mallorca and even Central America - it has fully recharged my batteries. It has given me new energy to get my head down and concentrate on working with The Louver Twisting Comb and not working around it. I’ve been lucky with two work residencies this year in amazing places, but even not being given that possibility, getting out to see other things and talk to new people is vital for not getting stuck in a process. Being my own boss is a huge advantage in that sense.
Last but not least, what tendencies do you see in Danish design today and how do you see your own work in that context?
It feels like Danish design finally is moving away from only being recognised as the well known design classics from the fifties. Designers are creating new classics and internationally acknowledged landmarks. Just look at Bjarke Ingells and Olafur Eliasson. Thinking big is not an unmentionable taboo anymore, which I think is a big relief for pushing everything further and going more international. Danish design has always meant high quality products and now that the support for working with innovation in an international context has grown. This means working as a Danish designer in London gives me the benefits of both the support and network from home and the international possibilities for expanding and reach people around the world. My dream scenario would be collaborating with Velux, a Danish skylight company, creating a completely new type of blinds, used world wide and made in Denmark.
Photo credit: Ingvild Dahlgren took the wonderful portrait of Kia and Jacob Robinson have shot The Lower Twisting Comb.
Check out more of Kia's work here: http://kiautzon.com
