Interview with Paulo Kós
Paulo Kós, Director of Furniture Design, is the visionary behind every sofa, sectional, bed and dining table that west elm creates. In our story, we look through the eyes of this Brazilian-born designer to catch a glimpse of west elm’s creative center.
1. Did you grow up in Brazil, and if so, how does your background influence and alter your design vision, especially in an American mass-market context?
My childhood was split between Brazil, where I was born, and New York.
My mother, a painter, often took me to museums and performances. I was lucky to have been exposed to so many influences that I can draw from. As a designer, the more you are exposed to, the more informed your design choices are.
Spending time in Brazil, I learned about people like Brazilian mid-century designers like Sergio Rodrigues and Joaquim Tenreiro and how they were able to merge modern design with primitive influences and indigenous materials. Our Rustic Acacia Console was designed with that in mind. I also deeply admire Santiago Calatrava, the master engineer of incredible nature-inspired bridges and buildings, and Italian designer Gio Ponti, whose has a beautiful sense of proportion in his furniture pieces. There’s a real lightness in the lines of their work that I try to bring to our products, like this season’s Desk and File Storage we created in collaboration with the Pratt School of Design.
2. What design principles govern your style and help you strike the balance between human comfort and incredible furniture design?
Comfort is always paramount. If you don’t feel comfortable in a sofa or a dining chair, you won’t use it, no matter how beautiful. We let the comfort inspire the form, and find the beauty in the curves and angles that create the most pleasant experience.
3. To give us a sense of how a designer-at-work operates, can you tell the story of one of the pieces you designed, from inspiration to final product?
At west elm, it takes a year for a product to go from initial concept to the store or website. The cycle starts with the idea. With the Cody Dining Chair we wanted to introduce a more feminine yet modern upholstered chair that looked contemporary without the hard-edged minimalism that a lot of contemporary furniture has.
After several sketches and 3-D models, we chose a design. Engineering drawings were made and sent to our partner factories for prototyping. The prototype that was sent back to us wasn’t 100% right, as is often the case, so we made several full-scale mock-ups to finesse the final shape and proportion. Once we were happy with it, we sent the revisions back to the factory, and finalized the design a month later. The whole process took about four months.
4. west elm has been seen as being young, trendy and hip, with a style targeted at 20-somethings. In your mind, is that who are you designing for?
Our goal isn’t to be trendy but to be an eclectic and uniquely modern experience. Modern can mean many things to us, from reinventions of antique and vintage forms to mid-century influences to contemporary minimalism. We try to find the right balance in our mix of contemporary shapes, rustic materials, and ethnic influences to create a rich and layered assortment – which is what I think is truly modern right now.
5. Many believe that designers like artists are born that way, a concept that contributes to the creative mystique. How would you describe how a designer’s mind works and sees?
Designers look at things with an aesthetic filter. I remember an essay assignment in design school. Instead of talking about the topic of the essay, the whole class discussed their physical presentations. They ranged from the standard stapled white papers to elaborate productions with color, covers, different layouts and formats. In a designer’s mind, everything – even something as mundane as an essay – is an opportunity for great design.
