This new series, Design bites, unveil the backstage of contemporary creation. Tackling various topics from personal designer processes to the position of Collectible design on the global design market; these bites offer different views to suit all tastes. Today we talk with Susanna Smailova and Ilia Moiseev from 11.

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COLLECTIBLE: An interior designer you dream to work with?

Susanna Smailova: May I answer about my favorite fashion designer, not interior one. It is Dries Van Noten. He is an enormous source of inspiration to me.

“The very first question I ask myself is what kind of dialogue with the space the piece would have.”

C: What are the key questions you ask yourself before starting to conceptualise a new piece?

IM: The very first question I ask myself is what kind of dialogue with the space the piece would have. Secondly, I analyze what information the selected material itself carries and how its physical qualities could suggest the design decisions further on. This process always goes side by side with the main subject of the volumetricity of light and how it occupies the space.

C: Are you more result or process-oriented? 

SS: There is usually a certain image in my head towards which I am trying to grow. But this image is more like a trigger for creating, rather than a concrete result. I think a process will always be at the first place for me, at least I want to think so. Looking back at the projects I have done - an actual fact of making something, production time, all the discoveries, struggles, conversations and side effects within those, interweaved with a daily life routine - it is already more than enough to me.

C: If you were to collaborate with someone outside of the design scene, from another industry, who would you pick? 

IM: Since my second passion is music, I would definitely like to collaborate with someone who experiments with sound and that artist will certainly be Nicolas Jaar. Every single piece that he creates inspires me in so many ways... I pay special attention to his performances in which he explores a strong relationship between the sound and the space that it inhabits.

About 11 (Switzerland)

11 was formed with the idea of searching for maximum emotional capacity within a minimum of design. Light objects and fabrics are the two main directions of our research, navigating between the naivety of shapes and the enormous sensitivity of the flora around us. Flower silkscreens is a series of botanical scans designed to capture a certain energy of the object, translate the character of a plant into another medium.