The best designers of the red dot design award 2007 in interview: Boris Berlin and Poul Christiansen

For its outstanding design, the innovative furniture series Gubi Chair II received a red dot: best of the best title in this year`s red dot award: product design. We interviewed the designers and directors of Komplot Design, Denmark, Boris Berlin and Poul Christiansen.

What inspired you to create this particular product and what was the intention behind it?

The idea triggered by the acquaintance with an engineered textile - felt produced out of PET fiber (mainly recycled water/soda bottles) that is formable and keeps its shape without use of any resin or glue.

Moreover the physical properties of the material such as the possibility to form it 3-dimentionally, sound absorption, easiness of cleaning, pleasant tactile features and air permeability pointed towards design of chairs, room dividers and other pieces of furniture.

What does being awarded with the "red dot: best of the best" mean to you?

“red dot: best of the best” is of course an important and respected design award. It gives the product a quality stamp and hopefully a “wind in the sail”.

What particular challenges do you think designers have to face these days?

At least one of the challenges is the necessity to reformulate the design profession in a post industrial age and of course the challenge of pollution. Not only physical, but visual and mental pollution as well…..

As a designer, what would you still like to accomplish in the future?

There are so many interesting objects and areas of life that we have not designed yet. For instance bathroom facilities, lavatory, WC and so on incl. the water consumption issue - is very interesting. Though we mean that there are no uninteresting and insignificant objects.

What do you think is the economic significance of design?

In the world of international competition and growth of the so called conscious consumer design becomes a constantly more important parameter. Sometimes the only one parameter influencing the decision to buy or not to buy. 

The cheapest way to add value to the product without any physical addition is to design it.

From the beginning – design and the communication of the feasible

Ecology, the teaching of all things circulating in nature, is one of the most pressing issues of our times and a continuous challenge for designers. Resources have become scarce worldwide and what is required today is to find feasible design solutions. Design thus also becomes a medium for communicating new ideas and each single product eventually also reflects its user’s attitudes and values. The Gubi Chair II collection is a furniture series based on the innovative use of polyester fibre felt and which points to new directions due to its ecologically motivated and inspired design. The chairs of this collection are mainly made of recycled plastic water and soda bottles used in a production process that is reduced to the elementary: two felt mats are first moulded around a steel tube construction in one single process and then water-jet cut – neither glue nor reinforcement of the thermoformed felt is necessary. This process results in a product with new characteristics, as the PET felt not only provides sound absorption, but is durable and easy to clean. This significant reduction to only a few elements in producing this collection also has a positive effect on the subsequent industrial process: its manufacturing does not require any further upholstery or mounting process. The light, stackable table of the furniture series has a moulded felt underside and a front panel; the felt protects the plastic laminated tabletop and the edges during stacking. The freestanding felt room divider is lightweight, easy to move and provides efficient acoustic screening. The Gubi Chair II collection imparts a new self-evidence with which ecologically approaches can be realised – resulting in highly elegant furniture.