Simple systems and variable solutions perfectly adapted to everyday living spaces: IKEA furniture is certainly the uncrowned queen of all these adjectives on the European market. While practical and easily accessible, these products also have their aesthetic limitations: how can you make your kitchen feel truly personal and intimate if every second friend and neighbor has exactly the same set-up? A Polish brand has overcome the problem of catalogue apartments, let us show you the concept!
FRØPT offers custom-made furniture fronts for IKEA furniture systems, which are varied and created according to the customer’s needs, with special attention to the smallest details. This means you don’t even have to throw out your well-established existing cabinets to get a whole new look for your kitchen!
“We wanted FRØPT to be a brand that is unique, exploring, but at the same time feeling close to our consumers and their lives. We’re based in Poland, but since the beginning, we have thought about FROPT as a European brand. Right now, kitchens featuring frøpts found their way to apartments all across Europe,” told us Magda Milejska and Kasia Kurowska-Loedl, the two friends who started the business four years ago.
Although it is an online brand, the core value of FRØPT is craftsmanship, and therefore they always collaborate with local artisans in the manufacturing of their products. They believe that well-organized spaces that truly reflect the personality and lifestyle of the user can make everyday life happier. They therefore want to encourage people to make a careful and conscious choice about the things they surround themselves with. Their main focus is on reimagining the kitchen as the center of the home.
“The kitchen is no longer a place associated mainly with cooking and becomes a living space in which we want to spend our free time pleasantly. It is for this reason that we approach its design more and more boldly and reject all the existing patterns imposed on us. A dream kitchen is an authentic space, consistent with the character of its resident. The kitchen should be adjusted to the owner, not the other way around. We, as a society, often think that your bedroom can be personal, maybe your living room, but we want to change this perspective and think about the kitchen in a similar way—a space that lives with the user and doesn’t come straight from the catalogue. We want the kitchen to be a place where you can focus on what is important and create closeness in your home/world around you,” tells Magda and Kasia.
They have recently opened a studio in the Old Town of Warsaw, which in the words of the founders is not just an office, but a living and breathing empirical space of their new ideas. The oak floors, wooden windows, antique kitchen cabinets and carefully selected objects provide a space for work and creative inspiration. “At FRØPT we’re constantly challenging ourselves, questioning the status quo, and exploring new ways of living. The recently completed project of our new studio is an expression of this approach, celebrated through honest design and refined rawness of used materials. Throughout the process, we’ve been following the idea of Modern Nostalgia — our take on the ambiguity and volatility of the age we live in. In a world that offers us everything, we’re looking for the few things that are meaningful. We’re nostalgic for solutions that let us slow down and be more present. Our goal is to deliver well-considered solutions that fit modern lives in the most intentional way. We believe the idea of curated living allows us to bring value and meaning back to our lives,” the founders told us.
Magda and Kasia continue to develop the brand’s range, and this year for the first time they have added a standalone product, a shelf concept, to the collection of furniture fronts. In the near future they prepare a special collaboration with illustrator Anna Nogalska.
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