GUSTAF WESTMAN LAUNCHES SUMMER POP-UP TOUR IN BERLIN THIS WEEKEND

Interview by Edda Alma Seibert
Images Courtesy of Vladimir @atouchofthesun

He seems to have a chunky something for every occasion there is: Swedish designer Gustaf Westman tours through five different European cities with his suitcase full of fun designs.

The architect-turned-designer is known for his colorful and sculptural objects, that consist of made-to-order furniture, custom design pieces, ceramics (the iconic chunky cup!) and glassware. 

For this first ever pop-up tour, the Stockholm-based design studio teamed up with Kindred Apartments – an exclusive, members-only home-sharing and swapping platform – to borrow people’s apartments for a weekend and transform them into exhibition spaces, each tailored to their unique surroundings and every city’s character. You can of course also shop the objects exhibited at the pop-up, from Chunky Cup to Chunky Tumblr, or, now newly dropped for summer: the Chunky Hot Dog Plate.

Gustaf and his sweet team gave us a tour of the apartment and he shared how he filled the rooms with color and design and that design should always include a bit of humor.

You can visit the chunky apartment today and tomorrow from 10am to 7pm at Fürbringerstraße 29 in Kreuzberg, Berlin. The summer pop-up tour will also include stops in Copenhagen, Paris, Amsterdam and lastly Madrid. 

Numéro Berlin: These rooms work as an exhibition through being filled with your objects, yet we are also standing in someone’s apartement. How did this special pop-up tour come about?

Gustaf Westman: We wanted to do this pop-up tour with Kindred because we have done pop-ups before in LA and New York – mainly, that we produced ourselves, then some collaborational pop-ups. But, I just felt like they’re so unpersonal and that kind of takes away that identity, so we wanted something more personal.

So yeah, we are going to do this in five different homes in five different cities. And we looked at a lot of different appartments, but we went for those who we feel like have some identities to the city. And for this it was the roughness of the walls. It’s like very Berlin.

You also gave your iconic chunky cup a Berlin makeover. It’s black and pierced all over.  Can we expect a surprise object for every city? 

That was like a special thing for Berlin. But yes, there will be a surprise object for every city…

All the objects fill these rooms and bring in energy, but it all blends well together with the apartment itself, and that feels very intimate.

Yeah! We also saved things like the sofa and the rug, it’s the owner’s pieces. I think, it’s very hard to get this personal touch too it if it’s only my objects. And it’s so interesting to see the objects in different spaces. It’s very fun.

And how did the collaboration with Kindred come about with?

I mean, because we had this idea, we reached out and asked, how it works. Do they have like apartments that we could be in or whatever? And then they thought it was a fun project. So now it’s like basically a collaboration and we’re doing it together. So it’s really cool. And it’s also super nice to like have someone who has the contact with their members. It’s a really cool, I call it initiative. A new way of traveling and sharing apartments.

And it’s so exciting, to have a look inside people’s apartements, and that can be so reflective of the people and the city they are living in. And the owners of these homes were all fine with it?

From the start, we were like, can we do this? Or is that fine? But yeah, it seems to be fine to do it in people’s homes. And everyone we reached out to was very open. They were very excited. Sometimes like dates wouldn’t work out or something like that. But we got almost every one of our top picks to agree and they were really excited. Every single member asked for a chunky mirror, haha! Yeah, they got to keep some pieces.

Do you think you have a favorite piece at the moment?

For me? Oh, at the moment … I think my overall favorite piece is probably my cup. Because it’s just really simple. And then the newest thing here, I really like the hot dog plate, where you put your hot dogs. Yeah. It’s kind of fun. And I like one-function stuff. Some people can be annoyed by that sometimes and I like that. And you need to have some humor, I think, in design.

 

And then for the tour we have small special souvenirs like fridge magnets, or we have a little merch station with some clothing. And here’s the postcards that you can get for each city. If you like something, you just fill it into this form we have. It’s very simple.

What was the first piece you created? And was it immediately a starting point to go into this chunky direction?

Actually, I don’t know … I think it’s this curvy mirror. That was probably the first thing. I mean, it’s not the first thing I did, but it’s probably the first thing that got some attention.

I think it’s just more about how I think, my design processes. I’m trying to find simple forms that are easy to understand … I don’t know, haha. I just like these colors and I don’t like endings. So they always turn out this way, sort of. But yeah, that was probably the start of like getting to do all this fun stuff.

What is not yet chunky enough?


What’s not chunky enough? Hmm. Everything else … That I don’t do. Haha.