Interviews with Ivan Levak

Living abroad, as an unpaid intern, buying designed furniture was a luxury I couldn't afford. So, ironically, I would take some Ikea pieces to build a home. But then, every time I would move to another city, all that furniture would stay... And making it financially unsustainable. At the end, an idea of a lightweight, easy to carry around, piece of furniture appeared. A design piece of furniture, made by high quality materials, easy to produce, with a price under 200EUR. And what better item would it be then the one that says 'welcome & goodbye' in your hallway or office.

The calculation was made by the traditional 'trails and errors'. We made a 1:1 modular model and play with the proportions and dimensions. We wanted to tall enough to hang a big winter coat by it's hood, which ended up to be 170 cm of height. Also, we didn't want it to be very wide at the bottom. That was a more complex task to solve. Finding the right balance between the angle of the legs with the floor and the wideness of the metal joints was the answer.

I'm a big fan of the quote 'if build by hand, can be fixed by hand'. Producing objects and solutions that can easily be fixed and/or are long-lasting was my favorite feature in design since my student days. To make it simple. To make it durable.

During that specific period in modern history, a lot of people in the world turned to themself. To educate themself, to challenge themself. As my partner Iva and I were neighbors at that time, we would spend time in the yard and just do prototypes from old wood leftovers and metal plates found in the garage.

Inward hooks came spontaneously. While experimenting with the central gravity axis as the main constructive feature. During the testing period we would mark the right spots for the hooks just by moving jackets and coats little by little: left, right, up, down

With each collection we improved the blueprints, by adding more precise diameters in the metal joint to make it more and more user friendly and easier to assemble.

While testing the 1:1 model, we used clothing items from every day use. Heavy winter coats and down jackets. By that, the final result was stabile, lightweight and durable.

We see Axel as an ambassador of an ideology where designers and other creatives can use fantasy (movie references for example, like we did with Interstellar) to make an elegant, timeless idea that can be easily repaired, joyful to use and simple to produce by local firms around your hometown.

My grandmother used to say: the more languages you speak, more value you have.' That being said, my attitude towards design and creative thinking is: the bigger the variety of your skills is the wider your solution will be. Having experience in nomadic life, living in nature during summer, living on remote mountains during winter changes your perspective of what is and what isn't important in your life. In your home. So while developing projects, including Axel, all the parameters, based very often by real life experience, are a pure result of personal fantasy, technical knowledge and user feedback.