Introduction

Energy & Work Beyond Furniture

00:00:16

I'm Valentin Loellmann, and I make furniture, interiors, architecture, but it doesn't really matter. I mean we just, I just make things and I think that's my profession and my passion.

00:00:30

My work is building a certain energy that is supporting whatever it is. So this energy is what we put into those furniture and it's something I am capable of doing because I’m good with my hands and I'm good in translating something into something visual for other people to understand.

00:00:52

I think I kind of managed without really realizing because this was something I did as a child already; changing my own room, putting in plants everywhere and building my, you know, big house with scrap wood and stuff because my imagination was huge enough to get to add that and make it a place.

00:01:11

We’re recently doing a lot of interiors and spaces, which is more public, which I like because people can just enter and walk through and it will be something bigger than that.

Ladder & Steps

00:01:24

There was an earlier piece like that to free myself a bit from this typical furniture thing. It started with a ladder, that isn't in here, but quite a symbolic piece and can just be a sculpture.

00:02:09

And then I extended this to just building stairs that has no function. It just end up in nowhere. And then you can be quite creative with a stair. I like to make pieces that are stimulating your childish ideas and you know, just make it less serious. And still using serious materials and techniques to build it.

Technique

00:02:09

So let's say my signature material is real material and it doesn't really matter what kind of material. As long as it's real. I'm still working with resin but I use it more to, to give the effect of real material. But mostly it's wood and metal and stone.

00:02:21

Then the signature became this combination of wood and brass or wood and copper and this, this welding together two materials that are actually not supposed to be welded together because these pieces that we make, you're not supposed to do that, I mean is something that is too risky and too dangerous.

00:02:32

If I go to company and I asked him to produce our table, they will say we don't do it because you don't put metal and wood together because the woodworks that matter doesn't or works differently and it will crack. And it will have a problem, but I didn't care and I'm not really caring about these rules. It's also a bit of a gamble to work like that because the risk of breaking is quite high.

00:2:59

I have the, I think the luck that these pieces, they work very well and I, and I can do them with my own hands. So it gives me freedom to create pieces like these, or like the big sculptures, like pieces that are actually not selling, but they are just there to go on and come up with new things and new ideas and combinations and explore.

The Future

00:03:26

I'm a bit sad that I'm, I just with the age of 35 and ended in this little group of wealthy people that can afford furnitures I do. And that's why I'm building, I'm planning on building a botanical garden for the city. A space that is publicly open. And this will be my work actually.

00:03:55

I mean I started designing, I'm coming from an artist world so I could have slipped easily into art or I could have slipped into product design, but I think I figured out that I'm not an artist, I’m not a designer, but I'm something in between or none of it. So I can’t tell you, I mean maybe somebody will tell later when I'm dead, what I actually was. Maybe it's something new that is not existing. Maybe there’s a new thing you know, a new category.