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Serve Surprising and Pleasing, but Don’t Overcook
An Interview with Shay Alkalay of Raw-Edges Design Studio
By Ziggy Nixon
Raw-Edges is a design studio in London run by Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay that tries to continually challenge the basic premises of why a designed object has to be the way it is and how it functions. Ziggy Nixon was very pleased to get a chance to discuss life, hard work and the joy of messy studios with Alkalay, the male half of this very busy and talented dynamic design duo …
STOP THE PRESS! Shay Alkalay’s Stack chest of drawers – produced by Established & Sons – has been shortlisted for the London Design Museum’s Brit Insurance design Awards 2009! Congratulations, Shay!
Stack © photo by Mike Golgwater
Why did you sign up for the graduate program at the RCA?
We found that their approach best met our targets. What was so important for us is that there you learn to not only look at products or product designs that solve specific problems but you truly get to do what you want to do. And they push you in this direction and challenge you to take advantage of this freedom. We were really drawn to the chance to broaden our vision.
Why did you choose London vs. Paris, New York, or Tokyo, just to name a few other key hubs of design?
Again, the style and program at RCA very much attracted us. We believe that Europe, in general, is one of the best places to have wide exposure, not only to people, but also to styles and approaches to design. Plus, we had the opportunity to study together with a very strong group at the RCA.
It was such a great experience; it was an amazing team in London. Plus it was so cool that almost everyone was from somewhere else: we were a group that came from all over the world. Almost right away we didn’t feel like strangers in a strange land, but, along with the other students, we felt like we were a big family. We definitely didn’t anticipate this, but it was terrific and the feeling only grew stronger over time.
Various works © Raw-Edges Studio
You were involved in the Platform 10 group, part of RCA’s acclaimed Design Products department which is known for many things including its “playful thoughtful ethos ... that it seeks to challenge existing product typologies”. What was this experience like and how was being involved in this affected your career and your approach to design in general?
The basic premise of working in Platform 10 was just doing things we wanted to without necessarily finding a good reason to do them. We were constantly challenged to question why people do things the way they do. We learned to just keep asking basic questions about the world around us and were pushed to try and break out of our typical ways of thinking.
We were taught to not just think about designing something but to think about the ultimate object’s intended function and work from there, not from a standard set of premises. Our professors encouraged us not to call something we had in mind with just a noun – like for example ‘chair’ – as this leads you to think “design a place to sit on with four legs,” instead just thinking of it simply as “design a functional thing to sit on.” Instead, we had to constantly try and look at something’s basic functionality in a completely new way.
It was incredibly open and new in the way of thinking for us. And we made such great friends while we were there. There was a fantastic group dynamic that developed and we were able to really take advantage of everyone’s unique and different ways of looking at things. We still all worked on our own designs, but everyone helped with the concepts and critical evaluations.
Tailored Stools © Raw-Edges Studio
What motivated you to start your own agency right out of college vs. moving into a more established design agency?
I think this has a lot to do with our experiences at the RCA as well. For two years, the school pushed us to do whatever we were interested in. It almost created a feeling that we didn’t want to work for anyone after the school … or maybe we even thought we couldn’t work for anyone else. You begin to realize that you want to keep doing your own stuff and hopefully be able to earn some money from it.
Plus, we decided that if we wanted to extend any kind of energy at anything – and were willing to invest the same amazing level of effort it took some of our friends to find “external” jobs – why not invest this for ourselves and start something for ourselves? Not that one approach is more right or wrong than the other, it was just right for us to start our own studio.
It seems that you have a general interest in environmental issues or social responsibility.
In terms of a green approach, I don’t see this so much in our designs. Yes, we’re aware that being environmentally responsible is very important, but we’re not so clear on what’s good to use and what’s not. The current state of input about recycling is kind of confusing anyway, especially if you’re making furniture or other objects to go into someone’s home.
Volume © Raw-Edges Studio
Whereas we’re not focusing on these issues per se, we do feel that if you’re producing top quality, good design, then it’s naturally going to be environmentally-friendly. For example, even if an object is made of plastic, if it’s good enough in quality and design that the end-user does not want to throw it away, then that’s positive for the environment. So much of waste is people throwing away things that are even only something like two years old.
For me it’s like if you take classic designs in many areas, for example furniture from the 60s: usually, people don’t throw timeless stuff like this away. Are these objects made with recyclable materials? Probably not. But, then again, they don’t wind up in the land-fills so quickly either.
You have some work being that is being produced by ARCO, among others. How do you see the process of going from workshop to large-scale mass production?
Basically, with ARCO, the process was already established and the scale-up to production was very quick and straightforward. I think this was simply because of our close attention to the initial prototyping process at Raw-Edges. Moving on to ARCO’s facilities was made even easier through our own experiences and experiments.
It’s so important for both of us to be able to make the designs we create. It’s like the Bauhaus way of teaching, where you actually have to form and make your own stuff, getting your hands dirty. In order to be really good at designing, we feel that you have to truly get an understanding of how all the different processes work together, or even how you have to combine different parts to create the final object, in terms of its functionality. And we’ve done lots of exhibitions where we’ve had to produce prototypes, too, sometimes under some pretty stressful deadlines.
Pivot © Raw-Edges Studio, taken from the ARCO catalogue, photographed by Petrik Pantze
In terms of the story of the project for ARCO, I met them at a show a couple of years ago in Germany where they liked my Pivot design. So they asked me if I wanted to mass produce it and I said “Yes!” I was really excited to do this. Obviously as a designer, I want to create an idea and I think it’s terrific to have the chance to have it expertly manufactured afterwards.
I knew they were going to do a good job. After all, this is their expertise. I’m not a carpenter, I’m a designer, so I was quite happy that they took it into production and it was great to see it being made right for the first time! We have other pieces that we’d love to hand over to someone. Plus, we want to move on to other stuff as well. It’s boring to just make the same thing over and over anyway. We get way too restless.