"I moved to Oslo in the summer of 2017 after finishing my studies in Eindhoven. I spent the first six months commuting to my mother’s outhouse in my home town to work before finding a space in Oslo. It’s a big space of 100 m2 that I share with a friend and fellow designer. It’s quite rough with lots of traces and wounds from the previous tenants. There’s 4,5 meters to the ceiling and it often gets cold during winter. It’s all worth it though, having such a large space to work in.
Having a space that’s big enough to make your ideas possible is one of the most important things in your work. You often see students graduating from school with large and impressive works yet when the grand workshops of the schools are changed into smaller studios, the work of the designer changes accordingly. I think that a lot of work suffers from change in this way.
I work best in a space that allows me to make a mess of things. I’m more productive that way, being in the workshop surrounded by materials and tools everywhere. Even when I don’t have a clear idea for what I want to work on, I just being playing around with whatever’s at hand and go from there.
Having a workshop that’s dedicated to making new pieces is a crucial part of my work. While I leave for home every day, the things that I create remain in the workshop. As such, the workshop becomes home to the objects that I create."
Sigve Knutson is an Oslo-based experimental designer. Click here to learn more about his work.