Mobila - 3/2010 issue
Editorial
Escape to minimalism
Articolul în limba română: Evadarea în minimalism
The Romanian furniture industry seems to have a fight with a time gap, a delay in reactions in regard to the new trends that makes the law and the money in the world of the interior design. Too many furniture manufacturer companies are incapable to get away from the old styles, designed three-for decades ago, and they are trying all out to sell heavy and exuberant furniture. Values as “durability of the furnishings made from massive wood” are appealed to – and there is no point to go against this argument, that on the other hand it’s true. But this is not the issue.
Today the access to the client categories with real buying capacity is possible only by profound understanding of the lifestyle of the modern human being, the one who buys furniture in 2010, or will buy in the near future. How this modern human being, our client lives? How many family members he has, how they have their meals, how they enjoy themselves, which are their most frequently used objects, what they expect from their furniture? If you designed a new range of products without previously rephrasing the answers to these questions, when the big moment will arrive, when the client will decide if he buys or not, you will have less chances. An apparently modern thinking trend, but having its roots in the ancient Eastern civilization, says that the human being owns more than he really needs. The multitude of unnecessary objects overruns the space where we live, and we arrive to the situation to lose our capacity to distinguish the real value from the ballast.
Today’s human being – instinctively or consciously – would like to get off the agglomeration and the kitsch. He got rid of the knick-knacks, he doesn’t have a glass case in the living room with crystal glasses, and he doesn’t want Persian rug and painting with a lake and a deer. The kitchen is invaded by electric appliances; the computer and the TV set are considered “domestic shrines” and a comfortable couch represent a higher value than the furniture with stocking role. We can call this trend an escape to the minimalism and the furniture manufacturers has to take in consideration this aspect.
Therefore we have to produce insipid cubes, unicolor boxes, which will disappear shortly after a new current, a new trend appears? Certainly not. The creativity consists in those tiny secrets that help us to give personality and value to the minimalist furniture.
Zilahi Imre
Today the access to the client categories with real buying capacity is possible only by profound understanding of the lifestyle of the modern human being, the one who buys furniture in 2010, or will buy in the near future. How this modern human being, our client lives? How many family members he has, how they have their meals, how they enjoy themselves, which are their most frequently used objects, what they expect from their furniture? If you designed a new range of products without previously rephrasing the answers to these questions, when the big moment will arrive, when the client will decide if he buys or not, you will have less chances. An apparently modern thinking trend, but having its roots in the ancient Eastern civilization, says that the human being owns more than he really needs. The multitude of unnecessary objects overruns the space where we live, and we arrive to the situation to lose our capacity to distinguish the real value from the ballast.
Today’s human being – instinctively or consciously – would like to get off the agglomeration and the kitsch. He got rid of the knick-knacks, he doesn’t have a glass case in the living room with crystal glasses, and he doesn’t want Persian rug and painting with a lake and a deer. The kitchen is invaded by electric appliances; the computer and the TV set are considered “domestic shrines” and a comfortable couch represent a higher value than the furniture with stocking role. We can call this trend an escape to the minimalism and the furniture manufacturers has to take in consideration this aspect.
Therefore we have to produce insipid cubes, unicolor boxes, which will disappear shortly after a new current, a new trend appears? Certainly not. The creativity consists in those tiny secrets that help us to give personality and value to the minimalist furniture.