We fell in love with Graypants lighting when we saw Murmurations dangling from a shop ceiling during the 2015 Design Week in Milan. The masterminds behind the brand and the active members of their team bend and twist ideas into perfection. Wouter Smit, general manager at the Graypants Amsterdam office, met designer Joost van Veldhuizen in 2012. Joost had a product, Wouter had an idea.
“This product didn’t fit with Graypants, so we needed a solution,” Wouter Smit told ArchiExpo e-Magazine.
Five years later, they created the brand Karven, Persian for “a group of desert travelers,” a brand that collects ideas, experiences, products, designs and designers from across the globe. Learn how the brand hunts for new products in the Soundcloud clip below.
Design Hunting with Karven
They released their first collection, Roest, at Euroluce – Salone del Mobile 2017. Roest (Dutch for rust), created by VanJoost, embodies nature’s reaction between iron, oxygen, water and time. Roest presents natural colors in unusual settings.
Roest. Courtesy of Karven
In an interview with Smit, we learn more about how the Roest collection is created, and how the rusting process is halted once the products are on the market. Natural processes can often take a long time, so how do they handle time constraints once a product is purchased? Find out in the Soundcloud clip below.
Secret recipe with Karven
Each year the brand will present a new member of the Roest collection, while they continue design-hunting for additional collections. Although now experienced in exhibiting products, Smit admits that “it’s still scary because you never know how the public will react.”
