Hung- Ming: “I grew up in an industrial area where my parents ran a small factory. When I was little, I was fascinated by how things were made so I guess that environment influenced me a lot.”
Chen-Yen: “As a child I often travelled with my family, which I believe is a really natural way to open a child’s eyes to the world. Although I grew up in a crowded city, my parents tried their best to put us in contact with nature. Since then, I’ve had an appreciation of beauty. I think my creative influences mostly come from nature and companionship with my parents.”
Elegant, thoughtful simplicity.
Hung-Ming: “We start by discussing ideas, and I sketch them out and make 3D models. Chen-Yen takes charge of the overarching appearance, proportion and colours and selects which projects we bring to life. I’ve worked as an industrial and interior designer for such a long time and know how to operate CAD software and navigate the mass production process.
However, I easily get blinded, so Chen-Yen takes on the responsibility for the aesthetics.”
Once we’ve got ideas, we’d start to sketch them out and make 3D models. If a design is viable, we’ll make a full-scale prototype to try it out in real life. The whole process usually takes more than a year.
We visit the Konstfack library quite often. There are lots of different kinds of books we use for reference; not design books per se. Sometimes a great idea can come from a picture or a painting. Our daughter also influences our work. Since having her, we’ve sadly come to realise that we won’t be around forever. But if we do our job as designers well, she’ll see and experience our creations long after we’re gone.
In a way, it feels like we’ll still be with her. Being parents has given us so much inspiration and makes us consider the human relationship between time and objects. Both of us love timeless things. The notion of placing memories, emotions and thoughtful simplicity in an object is really romantic.
The main idea behind Afteroom is to be an advocate of the traces of time. All our designs share the spirit of this thought. We simply want to create objects people won’t get tired of and will want to keep for generations to come.
Compromise.
Working at our own independent design studio allows us to research the subjects we’re most interested. Often, if we dig deep enough, we can always find a new direction to try something unexpected.
WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR DESIGNS?
We hope our designs are recognised for their sophisticated simplicity combined with functional elegance and that people will use our designs as practical, elegant objects that are a graceful accompaniment to life.