Archives

Up Close And Personal With Werner Aisslinger

Multi-award winning Werner Aisslinger speaks to Nicole Liang about his design philosophies, favourites, fears, and designer furniture.

Werner Aisslinger is well known for his creative approach to technology and materials, particularly in combining the latest production techniques with new materials. The acclaimed German designer has also been commissioned by some of the world’s most cutting-edge and respected international furniture brands such as Cappellini, Zanotta, Magis, Vitra and Porro, to develop high-end furniture collections.

The design all-rounder also engages in product design – some of his clients include luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz, Bombay Sapphire and Hugo Boss. In an email interview, we peep into what inspires, frightens, and propels Aisslinger, who was once Professor for Produktdesign at Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, Germany.

Nicole Liang: When is the best time of the day for you to carry out design work?
Werner Aisslinger: Day and night. In fact I do lots of things around my design work like travelling, having meetings, talking to suppliers or engineers, doing research, speaking with my team… so my personal creation-time everyday is short and intense. I like and need quiet moments like in the evenings and weekends for intensive creative output!

What could be the most frightening thought about the future of furniture and design?
That there is only IKEA left… I do like some IKEA products. Because of their dominating world market position, they are incredibly powerful. But I prefer a wider spectrum of small and innovative brands with many different designers, instead of one single market giant.

You mentioned that the future capacities of furniture will be linked to functional options like knocked-down concepts, condensed volume transportation, reconfiguration of elements, lightness and addition in steps.” Can you elaborate further?
Knocked-down as a modular system concept – so that the user could dismantle a furniture into pieces and transport them to his new home or new office in a minimum volume.

A modular system means that the user might use the parts of a horizontal sideboard after a certain time to build a vertical shelving structure.

“Addition” means you start with sideboard, and then you plug on a table, then later on you extend the sideboard on one side into a bookshelf.

Your personal approach to design is to create modular units (for nomads as well as for growing families). When did you start having this philosophy? Doesn’t that limit your works?
This philosophy is always interesting when you design storage modules, wardrobes, office furniture, etc – generally speaking more rational furniture. An office can grow and increase its existing furniture pieces or in a home a family can enlarge a shelf or other storage volumes. So modularity is always more clever than static, constant volumes of furniture.

This philosophy actually widens my work. For other single furniture pieces like chairs, or tables, I naturally don’t use this philosophy!

Another of your personal approach to design is to find what comes next (going beyond actual borders of aesthetics, materials, approaches, technologies). Could you give two to three examples of how you have achieved this?
1. Gel-furniture from 2000 and 2001 with Zanotta and Capellini from Italy: this was my first furniture collection using this new upholstery material.
2. Loftcube: a transportable nomadic house based on a new philosophy of living on city rooftops.
3. Nic chair: one of the world’s first plastic-chairs using the air-moulding technology.

“Designer furniture must be artistic and expensive.” What are your thoughts on this?
A lounge chair could be sculptural because some typologies of furniture need to be very outstanding in a flat – but a bookshelf needs to be functional and clever. Expensive? Yes – in a way a little expensive – because only small design- and technology-orientated brands invest in new design ideas and spend time and money for research and technologies. Hence, the products of those design-orientated brands are more expensive than the mass-market ones, who normally just copy the leading brands.

What goals/philosophies do you have when teaching students about furniture design?
It’s all about technology, materials, sophistication of surfaces and finishes, weight and lightness, stability, conceptual design, ecology and sustainability, advanced design, friendly shapes, ergonomics, being ahead of the market, trying to work for tomorrow not for today’s mainstream markets, being an inventor and creative entrepreneur.

Furniture is growing more and more related to fashion (as in apparels, etc). Do you think this statement is true? What are your opinions about it?
Furniture is a second skin to people (first is fashion). Furniture pieces are direct and accessible and they build an aesthetic layer around us – that’s why their influence is enormous on lifestyle, feeling, history, daily culture, fashion, personal mindset.

What do you like designing best (i.e. furniture, interiors, industrial product, jewellery, etc)? Why?
I like to do very different objects. This year I designed a house, vases, eyewear, a wristwatch, a hotel, lighting, and office furniture… I love to work in different creative fields but still most of my design-work is furniture.

How would your fans/friends describe the style of furniture you design?
Hopefully: astonishing, iconographic, long lasting, experimental, perfectly engineered, mind blowing, friendly, comfortable.

What is your favourite source of information (i.e. Internet, TV, magazines, etc) and how does it influence your designs?
My source is the daily life around me and Berlin as this is the city where I spend most of my time in. Travelling is also a perfect source! Designers are seismographic people: they continuously check out the world and daily life around them and transform these impressions into design-ideas and concepts.

How important are design competitions and awards to furniture designers?
Awards show that something is unique and outstanding so awards are always helpful for a designer’s career.

The works of the designer Werner Aisslinger (www.aisslinger.de) cover the spectrum of experimental, artistic approaches, including industrial design and architecture. He delights in making use of the latest technologies and has helped introduce new materials and techniques to the world of product design like in his unique gel furniture with the collection “soft cell“ and the chaise “soft” for Zanotta in 2000.

In the process he has created striking designs and received awards from all over the world — from Milan's Compasso d'Oro to the Design Prize of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Red Dot Award to the FX Award in the UK.

His works are exhibited under the permanent collections in international museums such as the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the French Fonds National d´Art Contemporain in Paris, the Museum Neue Sammlung in Munich, and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil, Germany.

Aisslinger lives and works in Berlin.

Design Awards Received:
• Red Dot, Designzentrum Essen 2006, 2004, 2002, 2000, 1994
• Compasso d’Oro Selection, Milan 2004, 2001, 1995
• Selci-Award - Best Lighting, Barcelona 2008
• Hotel Of The Year, Expo Real Munich 2006
• FX Award UK, London, 2005
• Selection Centre Georges Pompidou, “Carrefour De La Création” Paris 2001
• ADI Design Index Milan, 2000
• Blueprint 100% Design Award, London, 2000
• Selection Bio 16/17 - Design Biennale, Ljubljana 1998, 2000
• German Product Design-Award, Frankfurt 1996
• Design Plus-Award, Frankfurt 1992