The Unity of Opposites
With furniture that oscillates between exotic charm and purist contours, Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien aren’t just bringing a whole new look to the world of interior design, they’re giving it individuality as well. Their installation “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage”, which the two young designers are busy planning for the next imm cologne, also looks set to be a very personal statement.
“Some pieces are more Nipa, others are more me.” It’s hard to think of a more apt description of the young designer couple’s work than this sentence from Jonathan Levien. Whilst the office they founded in 2000 is still mainly known to design aficionados, it has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years with furniture, cookware and shoes that are as original as they are “portable”: often unusually colourful “cultural hybrids” with emotional appeal that stir up the design world. Their clients include Moroso, Cappellini, Tefal, Richard Lampert, Glass and Authentics.
The debonair Brit – very definitely the modern gentleman type – leads us through the studio on the first floor of an old warehouse in Shoreditch, a creative hotbed in East London. The paint stains on the floor testify to its past life as a painter’s studio – and it is evidently still very much a place of work today. Five workstations vie for space between the rough brick walls, tables laden with samples, show cases and shelves containing not just carefully displayed design items but everyday finds and souvenirs from the couple’s many travels as well: plastic sundae dishes, fabric samples, artistically draped clothes, shoes, folded objects, brass Lotas from India, packaging from Hong Kong... and prototypes, books and drawings everywhere.
Nipa Doshi was born in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) in ’71 and grew up in New Delhi. She studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad – an Indian oasis of functionality. While she was working on designs for toasters and coffee makers with Braun-like aesthetics, the people outside on the streets were making their tea over an open flame. This aesthetic gulf still kindles Nipa Doshi’s creative energy today. Which is why, after gaining a second degree at the Royal College of Art in London – where she met Jonathan Levien, by the way – she initially returned to India to collaborate with artisans on finding a contemporary mode of expression for native products. It was during this period that the idea of combining the different cultures with one another was born. Jonathan, on the other hand, has a far more functional understanding of design. Born in ’72, he first trained as a cabinet maker before studying design at Bucks College in High Wycombe (Buckinghamshire), doing an MA in furniture design at the Royal College of Art and spending three years working at Ross Lovegrove’s design studio. The antithesis that left its mark on him was the contrast between craftsmanship and automation. Even today, he builds the prototypes of the couple’s designs himself.
The “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” installation is about identity and about giving design a face, about turning one’s home into an expression of one’s personality. Doshi Levien will be building a home in the middle of the imm cologne trade fair, in the midst of Pure Village – based entirely on their own plans and ideas and featuring their own furniture, their favourite pieces from other brands and the occasional prototype from their studio. And the modular steam bath by the name of Ananda that they developed for Glass will of course be playing a central role as well. The designer couple’s vision of contemporary living based on an individual concept promises to be extremely interesting. How much transparency will they permit, how much intimacy will they create – and how much of themselves will they reveal?
