We already fell in love with the Plié furniture set they made, and now they have put the cherry on top. We have always known about BY ATELIER architecture studio that they have what it takes to master creative design. We asked one of the founders, Zsuzsanna Kiss-Gál about the new Plié Wall Sys collection.
The Plié furniture family debuted in 2013, which was a unique innovation in the field of Hungarian furniture design: BY ATELIER designed a collection consisting of pieces that can be folded in an origami-like manner (bed-table, stool, table, tray). In the case of Plié furniture, it would be no use looking for traditional carpentry intersections (as there are none), instead, we can meet a playful and exciting object.
In the case of the Plié Wall Sys collection, the shelves working along the principles of Plié furniture remained, and the lead role was taken by the carrier surface itself: the wall-covering.
Zsuzsanna: In the case of Plié furniture, the fact that we designed the given pieces of furniture in a manner to be foldable was not enough in itself. This quality of the furniture becomes exciting if the two sides are different: owing to foldability, the users can vary the furniture as they like, they can decide which surface is exciting for them at the moment.
We regularly received feedback like although the furniture can be folded to be flat, it’s quite complicated to place it on the wall, and this makes using it more difficult in the everyday life of users. On top of that, we received more and more unique requests where they wanted us to make the furniture placeable on the walls.
We realized that we should keep this kind of playfulness by all means, at the same time we should offer easier and more comfortable usage for users. This is why we opted for wall-covering at the end.
Who are the creators of plié wall sys?
In terms of design, this was a true team work. My husband, Gergely Kiss-Gál, Zsolt Krausz and myself were the lead designers, but designers Bogi Kovács, Ábel Kurta and Margó Petró contributed to our work a lot.
When and where could the audience meet the Plié Wall Sys wall-covering first?
The product debuted at theWarsaw Home & Contract exhibition in Warsaw, in the framework of the Polish design week in October 2019. We also showcased it at Berlin Design Week soon after, at Design Pool.
How did the audience react to the new collection? What feedbacks did you receive?
They loved it very much. Although it was not clear for everyone for the first sight how this wall-covering works and how much opportunity these shelves and the arrangement offer. We showed them at the expo how much creativity a furniture set of the kind could allow. Many people told us that the appearance of the panel itself and the shelf system is very aesthetic: it is elegant and playful at the same time.
A truly interesting feedback was that those interested mainly wanted to touch the felt surfaces – the use of warm and soft materials of this kind is absolutely unconventional in the case of shelf systems. The more skeptical visitors wanted to know the bearing capacity of the shelves – we surprised them many times when we told them how much weight the system can take.
Amongst the pieces of the Plié Wall Sys collection, one can choose from four different wall-coverings (signed ’x’, ’+’, ’x+’ and ’s’), these could vary depending on the type of foldable shelf placed on the given surface. Books, magazines and toys can be placed on the ‘v’ and ‘u’ and ‘house’-shaped shelves, but one could also hang hangers on them. The peculiarity of ‘Panel s’ is that it also allows the storage of the Pouf Plié stool. I could imagine this panel in the hallway of a smaller apartment. Who do you want to address with this collection?
Fundamentally, we did not design Plié Wall Sys for residential use. Of course they can work in a flat, too, but we can primarily imagine this system in the spaces of offices, cafés, stores, galleries and hotels. The wall-coverings can also be ordered with unique graphic design: here we combine the latest printing technologies with the classic carpentry surface treatment. This unique graphic pattern can make the wall-covering even more exciting, but one’s own branding could also be requested.
The wall-covering developed by us can be arranged flexibly, and it easily serves those who need to rearrange or recreate functions in a given space quickly and simply.
How does the Plié Wall Sys wall-covering come to life? Check out the image film!
Visual (logo, graphic design): Krisztián Vörös, vkgrafik
Photos: Csanád Kiss
Image film: Gergő Kiss
TOBE Gallery X Easy Wine | Budapest
INHALE! | OFF-Biennial 2020
