"There is a fascination with light and what it can bring
to an environment," says young designer Samuel Wilkinson in
describing the driving force behind some of his award winning
designs. The Plumen 001, which the designer worked on for almost
two years with manufacturer Hulger was, he says "a fantastic
project which explored the idea of an aesthetic lightbulb." It was
a challenging brief, to give form to something new and redesign the
energy-saving CFL light bulb. "You didn't know what was right or
wrong and we were pretty much going back and forth for some time to
finalise it." The end result of twisting the bulb's glass tubes is
a shape he describes as 'organised complexity,' complemented by a
soulful yellow tint when lit. The Plumen 001 led to Wilkinson
collecting the grand prize from the London Design Museum of ‘2011
Design of the Year’ and the highly coveted ‘Black pencil’ from the
D&AD, but he says his career has only just
begun... Wilkinson learned his craft at Ravensboure
College of Art & Design in 2002, graduating in furniture and
related product design. "It was a great college and I chose it
because it had great workshops. It's nice to make, get your hands
into the material." At the time, "Ravensbourne was in Chislehurst
near London, set in a purpose built modernist campus in parkland."
It has now moved next to the O2 centre but Wilkinson fondly
remembers the workshops, "which is not always the case these days,
where lots of universities are cutting down on workshop
availability and making it more digital. It is good to have a
balance of those things."
Six months after college, Wilkinson got an internship at
Fitch:London, a big branding agency, followed by a few other
leading consultancies such as Tangerine, PearsonLloyd, and Conran
"working on projects like transport and furniture. More of the
industrial design I really wanted to get into." Gravitating towards
design came naturally, "Art wasn't my best subject at school, I was
more maths and physics. I suppose it is more a technical outlook,
that's why I like to find order in my design. I found as I got
older, I could however bring my artistic side into that. I was
quite visual as a child and am dyslexic as lots of designers are,
you kind of gravitate towards making things, patterns, visuals,
design based types of work." It is very important for design to have
life and energy, "the ideal is to create character and soul in the
object, while also have functionality, sustainability in terms of
durability and quality, so that it holds interest." It helps that
his training in furniture design has given him solid grounding in
ergonomics and visual balance, "There are so many subtle facets.
You can design two objects in a very similar way, but one may just
have that something special that can push it that little bit
further." The studio in hackney has shelves littered
with designs, lights and intricate little paper and 3d printed
furniture mock-ups. Picking up a piece of wood, "this was the
initial stage of the Hoof table for Danish company &tradition.
We were playing around with the bandsaw and making different
patterns, realising when you cut it in three or four ways you get
this pencil type reference." The table is less pencil orientated
however, "we took the reference of that and formulised it a little
bit more, different from a usual manufacturing process, in that you
would paint it first and then cut the ends afterwards." It produces
a beautiful craft aesthetic. His work has led to an inclusion in Design
week's UK top 50 consultancies, which he says "was a massive
honour. Its nice to get professional accolades like that, but even
as a student, winning the D&AD New Blood Award and the RSA
award which gave me a travel bursary to go to Japan, was very
special." There is a sense that greater projects are ahead of him
and what could be a dream project we ask "it changes all the time,
maybe a hotel, where you can design everything, from the cutlery
and furniture to the interior. Because then you can really
cultivate that environment, whenever you design a product you
imagine the perfect context for it, its not often you get to
facilitate that product into a space."
There is somewhat of a cultivating of an environment in his work,
jointly designing L’arbre de Flonville in Lausanne, Switzerland. It
was he says, an "interesting project, with an ex-Ravensbourne
colleague of mine, Olivier Rambert who lives in Switzerland and
heard about it. Working with a simple contemporary town square, we
thought there was an opportunity to pitch something a bit more
crazy. It was quite a boxed off square, so we wanted to oppose the
regularity and linearity of these cubic buildings and propose
something a lot more anarchic." The 16 metre tall metal trees
reference the shelter of an old oak tree, "somewhere you feel
comfortable to sit, the root benches permeating outwards from the
square have a function of leading people in to the space," when
coupled with "little visions from outside the square," It brings
people into the middle and through the space. What first drew me to the work of
Wilkinson was the Biome. I have a Biorb with several energetic
goldfish, just watching them swim in the aquatic world in amongst
the Elodea and Java fern is a great stress reliever. The digital to
physical interface, in controlling the environment of the Biome,
almost like a Tamagochi can have the same stress relieving
benefits, "everybody is so submerged in their iPads or iPhones,
trying to connect that through an app to a real physical thing,
nature," albeit a micro environment "can be a thing of joy." The
Pendola Clock project is in a similar theme to Biome, in that it is
centred around ‘Digital downtime’. Proposed with an engineer friend
Joe Wenworth, the brief was to make it look like it was free
swinging and not powered, and is hopefully going into production at
some time soon. "The internals give a really fluid movement, but
the main idea was to create an aesthetic clock that can have a
second function, something you can turn off and on as desired,
creating a soft or relaxing mood for say a Sunday afternoon or when
hosting a dinner party." Speaking of the approach to design and
aesthetic over the years, "I don't think it has changed that much,
obviously the more technical you get, the more refined you become
and your eye gets more balanced. You know what works or doesn't
much quicker. When you are doing a project which is more market
driven, you get to know parameters and workflows better. That's
what has mainly changed." The Vessel lamp for Decode, an enclosed
glass shell that accompanies Plumen 001 is something that also
works very well, in that they complement each other. The
reflections you get off the Plumen 001 create an almost holographic
effect, "lighting is very different to furniture, which is
sculpture in space, light can illuminate an entire room." The
vessel is hand-blown by a master craftsman, "a lot thicker glass
and I'm still amazed they can be hand-crafted to a very specific
shape, without requiring any mould." Other recent works include a
modular chair designed for Decode and an compact affordable desk
for Case.