360 Design Budapest continues its design DIALOG program series, creating a professional forum to provide up-to-date information from an unconventional perspective for those interested in design. We spoke to Eva Slunečková, Czech representative of the informative cross-border roundtable “Visegrad 4 the future of design”. We asked the head of ELLE Decoration Czech Republic about the current state of Czech design, trends, objects, professional beliefs, fine arts and relationships. Find out more!
During and after your studies, you were very involved in visual arts. How has this influenced your current vision and approach to design and interior design?
Originally, I studied art history where I learned a lot about the nature of creativity. It struck me how various people can see the same topic quite differently. For example, if you let 10 artists handle the subject of “happiness”, you get 10 different interpretations. I also worked with several galleries in the Czech Republic and London where I spent a lot of time with artists and art in various forms. It gave me a huge lesson about the importance of originality in our daily lives.
Our everyday environment, the way we live and spend our free time, have a big impact on how we feel, act or think. It makes a huge difference if you live in a temporary setup or in a home where every single activity such as drinking coffee, putting flowers in a vase or serving food, makes you feel good or triggers emotions. And I believe it’s not a question of money but imagination. You can feel great in a room or studio apartment too.
Photos: Robert Tichý
Trends and fashions follow and change one another. What do you think about the current interior design trends? Do you support following trends or do you prefer to look for timeless, enduring values?
Everyone is affected by trends even if we don’t think about it, and I’m not an exception. I love a timeless environment that I like to complement with smaller objects or accessories that flexibly react to the current trends. It makes me happy that sustainability, vintage and second-hand goods finally made it into fashion! That’s a topic very close to my heart. There is still a lot to learn from history.
Do you have a favorite object at the moment, if so what is it? What do you think, what is that one thing no home should be without?
Not a single home should miss an object of desire. Something that inspires you every day and makes you think. For me it’s currently a painting by a Slovak visual artist, Patrik Krissak. He uses an interesting technique of painting with color bottles. This “limitation“ creates a great space to explore the possibilities of colors, layering and scratching. I have his painting in my bedroom and every day before sleeping and after getting up, I spend a few minutes thinking about the motif, gesture or just watching the calm colors, which makes me feel good.
Do you have a professional credo, confession? As a design journalist, what is your biggest goal, what do you want to communicate to your readers in the pages of ELLE Decoration Czech Republic?
As the head of the Czech ELLE Decoration and a freelance design journalist I’m always trying to motivate people to be surrounded by beauty in different forms. Sometimes it is a great painting, a vase, an inspiring book, a plate, a glass or a sofa. I support innovative, ideally local products, traditional crafts and stories of people behind them.
You have been active in the Czech design, architecture and interior design scene for many years. How do you see its situation today in relation to the past years?
I see a big shift. In the behavior of designers, companies and also the clients. The will to invest in creativity grew a lot in the past 10 years. People begin to see the benefits of good architecture and also interior and product design.
They increasingly appreciate sustainability, crafts and interesting points of view. The importance of home was especially accelerated and tested by covid and isolation. The market is changing—slowly but continuously—and that fulfills me with hope for the future. We still have a big lack of appreciation in the field of limited design pieces and artistic expressions that are at the intersection of art and design.
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