Andu Masebo’s stripped-back designs are knowledgeable by supplies and manufacturing

A lot of product designer Andu Masebo’s work is a take a look at of limits and an ode to perform. With a background in carpentry, ceramics and metalwork, Masebo’s work is knowledgeable by a fundamentalist curiosity in the best way objects come to be. ‘I’m concerned with making easy issues that may be simply accessed. However I additionally need to reveal the message of one thing deeper under the floor,’ Masebo explains. 

Andu Masebo: London as design inspiration

Having lived most of his life in London, Masebo’s native metropolis is a definite and evident affect. ‘It’s the place that has had the most important affect in shaping my design sensibility,’ he says. This exhibits itself to be true – from his ‘Candleholder No.12’, an object that initially was designed and manufactured alongside the south London route of bus quantity 12, to the latest ‘Tubular Chair’. The ‘Tubular Chair’ is one in all 13 items provided by the not too long ago launched Atelier100 initiative that seeks to encourage native design and manufacturing, with every object having been made inside 100km of London.

Masebo studied ceramics at Central Saint Martins and product design on the Royal Faculty of Artwork. In between each stints, he spent roughly ten years working as a carpenter and metalwork fabricator. These experiences have amalgamated in ‘a apply rooted within the practicalities of constructing issues and the pragmatism required to work inside pretty tight constraints’. Working alongside the traces and ideas of a type of design existentialism, Masebo seeks to shorten the cognitive distance between the maker and the customers of issues. His processes usually centre on one thing important and irreducible in the best way that he works with supplies and processes. ‘The design parts to my work are sometimes fairly stripped again and centre round a selected machining technique or materials high quality that’s related to the story contained throughout the object itself.’

Daring and decidedly industrial, the ‘Tubular Chair’ makes use of recycled rubber for its seat, whereas the body of the chair is manufactured from chrome steel historically used for automobile exhausts. ‘I had wished to discover a technique to work with a automobile exhaust fabricator lengthy earlier than I designed the chair’, Masebo explains, elaborating on how the chair conforms to the technical constraints of the automobile exhaust trade. ‘My preliminary strategy was to discover a frequent language and perceive the constraints the producers work to. With this info, I used to be capable of give you an concept that was technically doable to supply. However I additionally wished to make one thing I might not have give you if I used to be working alone.’ 

The philosophy behind this object shows a poignant means to render perform and design inside strict limitations. This acuteness is evidently the staple of Masebo’s type, the place up to now he has proven himself able to producing a gorgeous and useful chair with only a single plank of wooden, and has demonstrated restraint with a shelf collection the place every bit is barely capable of fulfil a single, easy perform.