In Berlin we met the two designers Hrafnkell Birgisson and Sebastian Summa. They talk about some of their works, including “Patch up London”, a “presouvenir”; “tools you bake”, a series of six hand-spun baking bowls developed in collaboration with the metal goods factory Hugo Bräuer in Berlin; “hoch die Tassen”, unique cups made of discarded second hand cups and a prefabricated glass stems. Interview: Sabine Trieloff. Berlinomat, Berlin/Germany, September 30, 2006.
Hrafnkell Birgisson and Sebastian Summa have worked together on projects for exhibition- and product design since 2002.
Sebastian Summa was trained as a blacksmith before he began his industrial design studies in Berlin. He also designed the lamp “phon” for Hugo Bräuer Metallwaren.
Hrafnkell Birgisson studied design in Saarbrücken and Berlin. He works and teaches in Reykjavik, Weimar and San Francisco amongst others.
Hrafnkell Birgisson and Sebastian Summa have worked together on projects for exhibition- and product design since 2002.
Sebastian Summa was trained as a blacksmith before he began his industrial design studies in Berlin. He also designed the lamp “phon” for Hugo Bräuer Metallwaren.
Hrafnkell Birgisson studied design in Saarbrücken and Berlin. He works and teaches in Reykjavik, Weimar and San Francisco amongst others.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00We are at Berlinomarkt at Frankfurter Allee in Berlin and I have two guests,
00:06Kili Birgisson from Iceland and Sebastian Zummer from Germany,
00:12two young designers who are producing together for quite a while
00:17and as far as I remember they met each other the first time in Berlin.
00:21Is that right?
00:23Yes, that's right. I came here in 1995 to study.
00:27I studied in Saarbrücken in the south of Germany at the art academy there,
00:33product design, and after my studies I moved to Berlin
00:39where we soon met and started working together.
00:45I studied in Saarbrücken with Grandolini and other professors too.
00:54They were teaching there. It was not like we only had one professor, we had several.
01:00But there was a special concept behind the design studies in Saarbrücken.
01:07It was really a flow between different departments.
01:10The art was kind of crossing the design and you could do courses
01:17and you could make performance even as a designer.
01:21It was a totally new concept and Grandolini was really into this.
01:26He appreciated this concept.
01:30Not every professor did at the school, but he really wanted to make something out of it.
01:36I really liked his approach a lot. I think he influenced my work definitely.
01:45For example, the idea to pick up the local manufacturers in Berlin,
01:59not to think so global, to think more local.
02:04That's the idea of Vogt and Weizner, for example.
02:08And also to think about the social aspect of design,
02:18not only the function or the production, but also the social context.
02:33Coming to your products, we have here some glasses, cups, whatever.
02:41Can you tell us a little bit, you were talking about the connection between art and design.
02:47The idea has its roots during my studies in Saarbrücken.
02:58It was a short project, a day or two day project.
03:05The idea was to create a coffee cup with at least two functions.
03:13This is what came out of it.
03:16I think this process I was already interested in,
03:21to combine an already existing product with a new process or a new material
03:31and to make a new product out of it.
03:33The cups are recycled cups from European flea markets.
03:40There are thousands of them.
03:42Every day there are thousands more.
03:44Old lady dyes.
03:47It's different areas.
03:49It reminds me to my grandmother, to my mother.
03:52It's a different epoch.
03:56This could be the 40s, this is probably the 70s.
04:03Everyone finds a different character in the cups.
04:11It works really well as a product.
04:16People that already have one cup, they see it coming to the shop some weeks later
04:26and then they see a totally different cup.
04:28They don't want to have it in the row of cups they already bought.
04:41It's a mass product.
04:43Originally it's a mass product but processing it again with this recycling idea,
04:54you have a unique object.
04:58There is a continuity of course.
05:00This cup turns up every 400 cups.
05:06It might be this one again.
05:08It has a unique feeling.
05:13This is one of the products you are selling here at Berlino Mart.
05:19I think there is a second product, a baking form, which is a little bit newer.
05:26Maybe, Sebastian?
05:28We found a very nice small factory here in Berlin.
05:35It's a 100-year-old factory.
05:40It's a family-owned company.
05:44They are producing metal products out of metal sheets.
05:54They are using a process, they call it spinning, metal spinning.
06:01The metal sheet is pressed above a wooden mold while rotating.
06:11You need a wooden mold, one piece, and you can produce a lot of metal products with it.
06:21They have these wooden molds in stock since...
06:27100 years, I guess.
06:29Very old, thousands of them in stock.
06:33You can always use them again.
06:36I think that's one of the most interesting aspects of the workshop.
06:46They make the products in the same tool as they make the molds.
06:53In the lathe.
06:56You make the tool, and then you put it again in the workbench, the lathe.
07:04Then they put the metal sheet over it.
07:06Then they press the metal sheet over the mold, the wooden mold.
07:10Then you have a shape like this.
07:12They can make it in wood, but they can also make it in metal.
07:19We like it in wood because...
07:21The molds, yeah.
07:22The mold, right?
07:23Because the wood...
07:26You see the structure, yeah?
07:28You see the structure of the wood in the aluminum.