Foto: CasperSejersen
From the GOOD STUFF Interviews from J'N'C Magazine N°69 / 3-2017, Interviews: Cloat Gerold & Thorsten Osterberger
The duo designs modern gallery, office and retail spaces for customers around the globe.
When planning the drafts for your shop designs are you aiming for a timeless design or a more on-trend look?
Judith Haase: We start from scratch with each project by looking for the right language for the product. It’s not about creating a language for being trendy. We work with the space and its lighting, creating circulation and movement and, in a second stage, we work with materials and their interplay within the given surroundings.
Pierre Jorge Gonzalez: In reality, anything not trendy is dated. It’s not a goal to be trendy, but if your design is contemporary and interesting, it falls into the “trendy” category, or better yet: it creates a trend.
In your experience, how long is the average lifetime of a brand’s store interior?
JH: Around five to ten years. Everything should keep evolving and we do not see our design as timeless. If we designed the same shop we did five years ago, it would definitely look different. We are always evolving.
“Classic design is clearly recognisable because it has entered the collective memory.”
What does it take for an interior design to look timeless?
We’re not sure what you mean by timeless. Is it timeless for a season, a decade, a century? Forever? What timeless usually refers to is a reduced form of design and stylistic language. But in reality it’s a form of minimalist design that is associated with timeless design. We are not sure it’s a style that you can predict and therefore design deliberately and consciously. Unless you repeat what someone else has already done.
Please name a very trendy product you are glad of having hung onto over the years (and why).
The May Day lamp by Konstantin Grcic. It doesn't have permanent place – you can bring it and hang it wherever you are.
What’s your favourite classic?
JH: The F51 Armchair in yellow, designed by Walter Gropius.
PJG: I’m not sure I could name one. Sometimes it’s a piece from the 40s, then from the 50s and so on.
