Scenter, an aromatherapy device used to inspire Proustian moments, was the item that brought design studio Kawamura Ganjavian to our attention. Established in 2000 in London by Key Portilla-Kawamura and Ali Ganjavian, the studio has been in India, USA, Japan, Great Britain and Switzerland. Currently based in Madrid, this multi-disciplinary practice is also involved in Studio Banana TV, an internet-based TV station focused on creativity in a variety of fields. We asked Kawamura Ganjavian's Pablo Carrascal for more insight into the studio's work.

Divide It

The studio's designs range from sensory personal objects (Scenter is an olfactory journey, Eat With your Fingers a marriage between taste and touch) to those that are more practical (Divide It is a handy wastepaper bin and Plug On allows us to be more aware of light usage). What type of design do you specialize in?

We like to design for people, observe around us and try to find an answer to these observations. We understand our role as creative agents is to design using necessity, economy of means and novelty as our fundamental criteria. Simple things which work are the kind of things we like to design. We are not specialized in any field but we believe in our methodology that we try to apply in every idea we develop.



Plug-On



Eat Fingers



Scenter

Scenter is a fascinating item because we take aromatherapy a lot more seriously than we used to and this object allows us to tailor the scents we need to memories. What was the scent, and then the accompanying memory, that first led to this idea?

There is an incredible fact, human beings can memorize 35% of the smells and just 2% of the things we perceive and we live in an audiovisual society. Wouldn't it be fantastic to store smells the same way we store photographs? This was the start point to develop SCENTER. We like things that happen and we are not conscious about but which provoke feelings as strong as a smell. There was not a particular scent that we had in mind when we conceived SCENTER, each member of the studio had their own personal memory and we all felt strongly about this point.



Infomab information centre of the public art festival Madrid Abierto (photo: Alfonso Herranz)

Because you are also an architecture firm, what determines the types of design projects you take on?

We understand projects in all scales, from the biggest to the smallest, projects which cover a lot of people or something that you can take on the palm of your hand. The red thread that links them all is a strong conceptual and emotional positioning and an awareness that objects, buildings and cities should gain value over time through their accumulated meaning and usefulness.



Infomab (photo: Alfonso Herranz)

You have worked in a variety of countries and are now based in Madrid. How does the Spanish setting influence your work?

Indeed we have moved a lot, and this experience accumulates and becomes richer when it meets new realities because it gives weight to this mobile perspective of the world that we have. Madrid for us is a very comfortable, energetic and inspiring base-camp specially because of its charismatic people ("madrileños") but we still try to work and discover other places that bring new ideas to our own melting pot.



Key and Ali


+ studio-kg.com
+ studiobanana.org