We asked 10 designers "What product do you wish YOU had designed?"



Ben Oostrum: Oh, there are several, for instance the "no fruit" from Anthony Duffeleer, or the supernova by Richard Hutten. They come up right now, but it happens every once in a while that you come across a design that makes you feel jealous. Specially when it's something that you've been working on but couldn't get the right result or are simply just too late!



Frederik Roijé: I appreciate a lot of new and old designs. Especially the designs from Arnout Visser, for instance his Salad Sunrise, I really like.



Laurie Beckerman: Eero Saarinen's pedestal tables. I think it is absolute perfection and forever beautiful. There's nothing out there like it. It's a table that is broken down into the most elemental form. I could never get tired of looking at it. It makes my heart soar. But my deepest wish would be to create something really simple and useful like the toothpick or the Q-tip or the match.



Heath Nash: the geodesic sphere... I also saw a new table by Heatherwick Studio recently in a Japanese mag Axis... It's called Piggy Back by Magis and as the name implies, it piggybacks on another table. It's just so simple and perfect.



Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino: I wish I had designed the Life Straw, which is the best example of design for the ones who need it the most.


See Wishful Thinking Part 1 here.

We asked 10 designers "What product do you wish YOU had designed?"



Art Lebedev: Griffin Technology's PowerMate is something I want to be the author of. It's an extension of my left arm.



Brave Space Design: We're bigtime fans of the Bodum hollow walled glasses. They're pretty great. Jesse says the idea of selling a cup of coffee for a dollar when it costs 3 cents to make. He's a little jaded.



Big-Game: The Bic® Cristal® ball point pen.


Florian Krautli: Uh, I can't think of a specific one just now. But there are often very simple ideas in products which make me go "Great! Why didn't I think of that!"



Robert Langhorn: This might seem odd, but I recently bought a cat toy called the ‘Cat-Dancer’. It’s made from thirty inches of piano wire that has five tiny pieces of rolled-up paper attached to it which you wave about and it drives cats crazy. Everybody I know with a cat swears by it. I admire its economy and that it transcends the usual aesthetic values that we place on things. The enjoyment I get from playing with my cat with this toy is such that a critique of it as an object becomes irrelevant. There are a lot of over-designed pet toys available, but I’ve never seen anything as affordable, obvious or as effective as this one.

More wishful thinking tomorrow.

The À la Carte kitchen modules by Stadtnomaden were a hit at IMM Cologne in January. Oliver Krapf and Linda Altmann make up the team behind the brand that includes a terrific bed frame, a small roll-top table and a groovy birdhouse. All of Stadtnomaden’s pieces are easy to assemble and it is clear that manoeuvrability is am important element of the design process. We asked Oliver and Linda about some of their ideas.



Your products are a response to the increased mobility we all experience in today's fast-paced world. Although your pieces are conceived as modular, do you find that typical customers are seduced by the flexibility, but then only ever use the item in one way or in one place?
Certainly the idea of total flexibility is seductive - and of course this is our intention. But in a different way: We want to provide people with the option to have a high standard of living and comfort and the opportunity to stay flexible at the same time. With our products we offer furniture which fits all needs, avoiding provisional arrangements, giving an anchor point to their lives. The typical customer will probably not rearrange his home every other day. But he/she might even be seduced by the idea that he/ she could do so. And more than that the customer feels free in a way that he/ she knows that moving house will not become a problem.

Katrin Sonnleitner’s PuzzlePerser was one of the most interesting floor coverings at this year’s IMM in Cologne. Looking like a cross between a giant puzzle and a Persian rug, PuzzlePerser is made up of 1225 rubber pieces that can be recombined in different patterns. Sonnleitner’s work includes some nifty conceptual storage pieces as well, such as the intriguing Möbelette that takes it shape from what goes inside and the bold Immöbel that plays with our perceptions of space and order.

PuzzlePerser is described as a modular floor covering in that the puzzle pieces can be removed from the carpet and rearranged. A lot of your work has to do with movement, but usually we think of furniture and accessories as being more static. What compels you to focus on this aspect of design?
Living in your space means also getting used to the space and its objects and to create special habits. Habits do not support mobility. Nevertheless, users tend to buy furniture with wheels or furniture that could easily be rearranged from bed to couch to cupboard to table. But those functions are very little used.

When we saw Katharina Wahl’s Black Candy floor covering at IMM in Cologne this past January, we were immediately drawn to the combination of soft, squishy materials and the deliciousness of the shapes that Wahl has used. The first reaction was “Ooh! Yummy!”, but this was followed by thoughts on whether Wahl was pointing to other ideas of consumption or control.

Wahl prefers to keep it more subtle:
"It is a major concern for me to make clear that I see my goal in communicating certain ideas through the actual objects I create. So judging whether I did a good design or not will always be linked to people’s reactions on it. Your questions show me that I succeed in bringing in a disturbing element into decorating a living room. But it is just a subtle feeling of unease that I want to cause. I think pointing with fingers will spoil everything - and would turn my work needless.". More after the jump.

One of the pieces that fascinated us at IMM Cologne was the Pouf de Paille by Tete Knecht. The unusual combination of materials made this memorable, so we tracked down Knecht for more information. We were surprised to discover footwear of the same materials, but we should not have been, as this designer’s portfolio is full of interesting designs.





We recently saw your Pouf de Paille at IMM Cologne and are curious about this combination of straw and latex that you have concocted for some of your products. What led you to this particular pair of materials?
I created this combination, after many experiments with materials. The straw absorbs the latex, and from this mix an elastic, flexible and resistant skin is formed.