Slē, designed by Ádám Miklósi, was awarded the “Best of the Best” acknowledgement of the most prestigious international design award, the Red Dot, in 2019, which was awarded to only 35 designers out of the total of 4218 applications this year. Ádám accepted the award in October in Singapore – catwalk, flashing lights, great honor!
We caught the designer on the day of the award ceremony, but due to his numerous tasks (quite understandably) he could only answer our questions later – however, reading about the success of Slē is always a pleasure, especially with winter around the corner…
Up until now, Ádám has been more or less designing household appliances – this sleigh is, according to him, a kind of love-project, without particular limits. “I am an active member of the #weeklydesignchallenge movement on Instagram: here we sketch in some common topic together on a weekly basis – the sleigh was one of these topics around last Christmas for which I drew the first ideas. Soon it became the most popular sketch amongst the community, and, as a result, I decided to reverse engineer it to the basics, and then to design it in detail according to use and manufacturing aspects” – said the designer.
The choice of material and the technology itself served as the source of inspiration for Slē. “In the past year, I was living my plywood era” – told us the designer. During that time, Ádám experimented a lot with the material from manufacturing to processing. From the point of Slē, technology and function determined the design greatly, which breaks with our mental image of a traditional sleigh. Plywood as a base material, owing to its physical properties (abrasion resistance, increased moisture tolerance, flexibility), proved to be an outstanding choice from the point of the functioning of the sleigh.
Ádám started the development of Slē in the beginning of 2019. Anyone wishing to follow the steps of the design process can do so on the Instagram account of the designer, as Ádám has thoroughly documented the evolution of the piece on this platform. “The basic form and the inclined seat pan can also be seen on my first drafts, and then later on I made formal iterations due to statics and reduction of weight. The first concept was a bent plywood without a breakthrough, which gave a unique touch to the piece, but would have resulted in a robust and heavy end product” – Ádám explained. “I wanted to make a sleigh that is suitable for both kids and adults. I imagined a design that is sufficiently playful, yet clean as Scandinavian furniture and that gives a quality look to its user at the same time” – he added.
The designer plans to test the prototype of the special sleigh this winter. “With literally a board-model. This proto has less similarity with the design, but I am basically interested in the size of the sliding surface and the sliding features of the entire structure. Depending on snow, the testing will be done at Normafa” – said Ádám with a smile on his face.
Ádám Miklósi has already received numerous inquiries regarding the manufacturing of Slē, and of course he is also actively searching for the perfect partner with whom he can work together both in development and manufacturing. The designer plans to test the sleigh in the framework of a pilot program during the winter of 2020-2021.