The Crit #5: Stefan Diez
Have you ever wondered what designers think about their own work? What their honest reflections on success and failure might be, and what pearls of wisdom they have to share about working in the industry? The Crit, a new podcast from Disegno, has the answers!
Each fortnight, Disegno’s editor-in-chief Oli Stratford invites a leading designer to reflect on the highlights and lowlights of their career. Each episode, our guest will tell us what worked best; what failed; what pushed their career to new heights; what feedback most shaped their practice; and what they feel needs to be redesigned.
At the end of each episode, to complete their crit, they’ll be asked to give themselves a grade for their career to date: fail, pass, commendation or distinction.
It’s a design-school crit, delivered every fortnight! Subscribe to the show here, or sign up wherever you get your podcasts from.
Our fifth guest on The Crit is Stefan Diez, accompanied by show host Oli Stratford.
Episode #5: Stefan Diez
For our fifth episode of The Crit, we welcomed Stefan Diez from Munich-based Diez Office into the studio to explore his interest in circular and technically complex designs that have a simple and playful aesthetic.
Working across furniture, lighting, architectural elements and accessories, Diez has formed long-term collaborations with renowned manufacturers such as Hay, Vibia, Herman Miller and more, all while creating products which challenge standard commercial manufacturing methods.
Diez’s passion for sustainable design led him to publish his Circular Design Guideline, which stipulates that a product’s existence must be justified by more than circularity alone, an ethos which sums up his practice. “Circularity is not puritanical,” Diez writes. “To fulfil its aims, it must also be innovative, elegant and joyful.”
Listen to the episode to hear Diez review his work to date, from convincing Hay to create a table without a tabletop to persuading Vibia to create new manufacturing streams to cater to his light design, and his dream of redesigning the design industry’s royalties payment system to encourage circularity.
This episode of The Crit was recorded at Uncommon Holborn.
The Crit’s graphics were created by Leonhard Rothmoser.
The Crit’s music was created by Yuri Suzuki and Team Suzuki.