• Review of Decorate Life: Tendence Autumn + Winter 2008

To create means to express your inner self

We had discovered Alexandra Tsoukala’s complex and beautiful pleated fabric lamps arrestingly arrayed in one corner of the Tendence 2008 halls. Tsoukala had been selected by the German Crafts Association (Bundesverband Kunsthandwerk e.V.) as among the most innovative of the entire event’s offering and her lamps had been shown in the curated FORM 2008 exhibition at Tendence. Which all just made us want to learn much more about her and her work. Here’s what she came back with …

By Alexandra Tsoukala

What made you want to become a designer?

It’s not something I planned. Growing up with a mother who was a sculptress and a father who was an architect certainly helped to develop my “eye”.

I had a flair for designing things. It started off as a game but later developed into my work. You know: “...increase of appetite grows by what it feeds on …” At the same time, by pure chance, the owner of Bed and Sofa, who had just opened his first shop, happened to be passing an exhibition of mine and said: “Bring me two lights and we’ll see how they go.” That was the beginning.

Charleston lamps © Alexandra Tsoukala

What was the first object you designed?

A light made from iron and a thick, white cotton material.

How would you describe the essence of one your works?

It must be useful, with the identity of its material recognizable, for example, iron must look like iron, not try to imitate another material. The construction must be clear and the form a result of both its construction and its materials. Often a game is in play, but the principal, and most important, reason for the work is never lost sight of, which is, that it must serve the initial function that it was created for. The dimensions of the iron are never bigger than those that are needed to give the object form. It must be balanced and never tend towards the false. The colour is completely tied to the form. I always begin with white. It’s like the sketch in painting. Later, I see the colour I want. Some lights require only white. The workings, the shape, the colour are all elements of creation and successful design is achieved by balancing them all. Naturally, the price must be reasonable.

Curve table © Alexandra Tsoukala

Do your works reveal anything about yourself?

Yes, I think so. To create means to express your inner self. According to this definition, every object I design contains a small part of me. You know the saying: “Show me a person’s house and I will show you who he is”? Well, the same can be applied to both designers and artists: “Show me the work you create and I will show you who you are.”

Is there anything that bothers you about contemporary design? Design is a procedure that solves human problems. I don’t like science fiction. Paranoia bothers me, anything without reason and thought, awkwardness, the gaudy, the false, that without beauty, the ugly, lack of design, anything that doesn’t stand and is unbalanced, without measure, the Kalashnikov that becomes a lampshade with a so- called anti-war message, the trendy, the designers who design for designers! It requires determination and strength for one to resist the images we are constantly bombarded with on television and in advertising and periodicals … then you can see things from the beginning as if you are seeing them for the first time. Only in this way, totally free, can you design something original.

Genie lamp © Alexandra Tsoukala

You like to work with wood, iron and with cloth. What idea was your “pleated” series based your on?

Up until now, the lights that I have designed have been given their form by their iron skeleton, which I would then dress with a stretch fabric. Now, the fabric doesn’t play the role of a covering. Using the creases that are created by the pleating of this fabric, I can create forms from the fabric. These forms I support with a simple, very light, iron frame. This method has many variations and applications for each light. It gives movement and creates light and shade simultaneously.

For you, what is the relationship between design and fashion?

They both affect each other. Design flirts with fashion and fashion is enchanted by design. In magazines we see fashion shots that use furniture, lights … in their backgrounds. Design has started to operate with the rationale of prêt-à-porter. Famous houses like Armani, Christian Lacroix, Ralph Lauren and Missoni launch, at the same time as their fashion collections, interior decorating ranges: fabrics, furniture, crockery, tiles etc. It’s a way of increasing their profits. They often spread to other sectors, like architecture and cars. Once, one person would design houses; another, cars; another, skirts; and another, lights. Now everyone is involved in everything and I don’t know if this is for the best. I mean, can buildings resemble skirts and skirts resemble buildings?

Curve table © Alexandra Tsoukala

What’s your ideal home?

The ideal home is one that promotes a better life. One that is created with this in mind rather than created to impress, to show off or for social status. The aesthetics of a house must be shaped by the needs and the daily activities of those that live in the house and not be created like a false stage set, inspired by magazines. I have started to like houses that once I didn’t like at all, only because they have not given in to the fashion that dictates all houses must be almost empty, with bare kitchen benches and few objects, as if they have just been born, as if they have been dressed up to look elegant. “A man can change his clothes but it won’t change the man.”

What is your favorite object in your home?

It’s always the most recent object that I’ve designed. I love it. Then I wait to see if, with the passing of time, this love will remain as intense, or if it will abate, exactly like human relationships. In the beginning, things are blurred and often you don’t see clearly. Time is needed, to see if this enthusiasm was really warranted.

The designer with her Gen-Genie lamp © Alexandra Tsoukala

Do you think objects have a gender? Is there a female design?

It would be absurd to say that objects have a gender. Designers have a gender and often erotic fantasies that imprint themselves on an object in different ways. Take the scarlet red couch of Salvador Dali, which, as he said, was inspired by the lips of Mae West in the 30s or Alan Jones’ table from the 60s, when he designed furniture resembling women in provocative positions! An object must serve the needs of the people who use it, not their erotic fantasies. Objects of passion are beautiful and practical. Fetish objects are not. An object can turn out aesthetically beautiful, but this should not be the criteria for its creation. This is important, because aesthetics can only be something real, and to be real, they must have started from a true creative process that does nothing else but serve the need that created it. If it manages to be beautiful and aesthetic, even better.

What phrase best characterizes your work?

Honest construction, logic, simplicity, self-evidence, with a little humor thrown in.

Postscript: I would also like to mention that my company is called minimum and does not have any relationship with the term minimal (which is very fashionable at the moment) except in relation to the meaning of minimum, which is, only as much as is necessary and no more than that.