You are your work

Designing Between the Personal and the Professional

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I am writing this piece as an answer to a question I had difficulties answering cohesively in person lately. The question in question: What does all of this [my extended interests in bike building, hiking, Sardinian costumes, etc.] have to do with interior architecture?

And the answer is everything! However enthusiastically I exclaim that, the person asking does not seem so convinced or satisfied with that answer. Which is somewhere understandable, somewhere ignorant. Here are the thoughts behind answering “everything!”.

1. Bike parts are like furniture in a space

Screwing together a vintage bike from the frame up takes patience, knowledge and dedication to small out of production parts, measurements that need to be correct to a tenth of a millimetre and a sense of style. It is really about combining colours, materials, finishes — and actual functionality. It is about understanding parts with their design history attached to them, where and how they were produced, in what years, what bikes they were originally used on and how they are compatible with other parts.

When you abstract those processes you are really not far from the idea of sourcing vintage or new furniture and materials for a space, trying to make it look like a cohesive narrative or idea. You need to know about the origin, the production, the materials, what context they originally were designed for. And you need a sense of style to create this connected narrative —the space— with all these loose elements.

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2. Hiking is to learn to experience 

But what about hiking? What would that have to do with interior architecture? Because isn’t walking in nature and sleeping in the mountains the absolute opposite of sitting in a furnished room inside a building? Well, of course it is, and that is part of why I enjoy it so much. But what can we learn from hiking that suddenly becomes astonishingly relevant for designing interiors? 

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Hiking teaches you a whole lot. For example, how to incorporate all senses beyond the visual (which is drastically overused in interior design) in a space. How to design a room that feels like a journey. How to design and live with the minimal gear or furniture. How to understand what would be enough and what would be an exaggerated addition of objects. Moreover, goodness, all those nights in a tent have taught me how immediate and close a room can be to its surroundings, how much one can blur what's indoors and what's outdoors. Now I know that one day I will design the most wonderful fjellhytter (Norwegian cabins) -- spaces that feel less like being in an apartment that could be anywhere but someone decided to place it on a mountain and more like spaces that only exist because of the mountain itself. You know, finding the amount of "inside" that makes you feel like you're still outside, but sheltered.

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3. Cultural heritage and textile are a way to work with symbolism, colour and material contrasts ​

Over the next example: my personal dedication to learning more about my Sardinian heritage through the traditional costumes. And you may still wonder how that is relevant for someone working in Copenhagen and Oslo. Don’t you see the literal red thread? What could a designer possibly learn from understanding symbolisms within embroidery, specific colour combinations that tie a costume to its village, the contrast and harmony of different textured fabrics? It opens my eyes to using hidden symbolism within objects to create a narrative in a space, how to create colour palettes that tie a room to a building and its social and historic surroundings, how to combine different materials to create a friction that really excites.

4. Dining out (written in 2024)

During the field study of a dinner at restaurant Renaa in Stavanger, I wondered whether this visit belonged more to the realm of the personal and the professional. It was the professional that analysed the restaurant and interviewed chef Sven Erik Renaa, but it was the personal who cried when tasting the dish with squid. It was the professional that eyed the way of plating, the texture of the plate, the weight and form of the fork, but it was the personal that ate the meal and experienced the taste. When the personal and the professional are united in one person – the designer – every design experience becomes part of both realms. 

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Everything around us – our built and natural surroundings – is somehow part of what can be categorised as design. Whether it is the homes we live in, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the screens we look at, the bikes we ride ---- everything! Consciously and unconsciously, professional and personal. That is why personal experiences become part of the design. The personal informs the professional and it becomes what we call intuition. 

 

In conclusion, what I wanted to say is that, it does not make sense to actively try to divide what is a personal interest and what you work with professionally in the creative industry. You are your work.You are who you are, your work is your work because of who you are. If you had different personal interests, your work would look different. So embrace that everything is in fact interconnected, however absurdly far apart two ideas may seem. You don’t need to find excuses to connect two realms, you yourself are the connection point between them. And that should be enough.