OO! Eyewear Project. From design to fit

Background

Prototip Studio is Ioana Ciurea and Bogdan Goția. In 2013 we joined forces and decided to start giving shape to ideas we had been talking about since college. The first steps were product design projects, where you can control both design and production. We decided to explore a different side of being an architect, a more practical one, where the focus is more on the process of shaping and implementing concepts. The common point or need that we both felt was the impulse to put into practice the theory that we had acquired during our studies.

We continued to enrich our experience through internships we had in offices in London and Helsinki, where we discovered the same inclination towards experimental design that finds its rest after a long journey through testing and form.

Prototip Studio means for us long-term internships that we didn't want to make specialized on a specific type of architecture. We believe that the kind of experimental projects we have started, in which software or advanced design make contact with materials, spaces and become somehow limited by them, provide valuable insights into what the role of technology or theory that we approach in our work can be.

The first project that led us to the workshop was Wooden Headphones, a design project for audio headphones made entirely of wood. We found it a challenge to go into the workshop and understand the production process, merge and synchronize design and production. Being educated and accustomed to a way of design detached from reality, we felt it was important to unite these two spheres that define a quality project and become the link ourselves. What remains the most important thing about such small projects, where you succeed in encompassing a concept with a finished object, is that a bridge is created between the visionary architect or designer and the constraints given by the reality of a material, production method, etc.

OO! Eyewear

The OO! Eyewear is an exercise of imagination, design and production of a relatively common object, but implemented and realized in a personal form. It is one of the spontaneously created projects where the focus is mainly on the working process and the assumption of the steps in defining the design as a source of inspiration.

The first pair of glasses I made during a break while working on another project in the studio. Then, while working and studying the shape, I chose the fastening system, namely with an elastic band, which would make a pair of wooden glasses an easy-to-wear, comfortable and suitable for a dynamic person. This idea, of a pair of glasses strapped on with elastic like naughty children have, intertwined with all the conclusions drawn from the workshop work led to the project we launched in spring 2014. Such projects we never consider them finalized because, while dealing with or overseeing their fabrication, new ideas for improving the design are always emerging, which is why even now we are working on new models of the same project, in which we have re-evaluated aspects of shape, material quality and methods of making.

Just as with large architectural projects, a design project is considered good when it achieves its purpose, i.e. when it is confirmed by the user/bearer. The whole learning process continues from project to project and we consider this back-and-forth of ideas between computer monitor-designer-workshop-user vital.

Putting ideas into practice is, perhaps, the part not practiced throughout our studies, and therefore the need for a workshop where you confirm an idea by working with a particular material was also something we felt vital.

In approaching all our projects we find it important to eliminate the boundaries between professions or activities, that is why in all our initiatives the approach is multidisciplinary and we try to collaborate with more and more people or teams working in the most varied media - visual art, manufacturing, music etc. Among our most recent collaborations we can note: Tatiana Ciurea, Local, Sit, Pouf, Atelier Comun.

Atelier Comun

Realizing the importance of a space in which you can experiment, we supported and contributed to the creation of Atelier Comun which is, as the name suggests, a workshop composed of several entities coming from different directions. We formed a team of talented and skilled people in various fields, working under the same roof and sharing valuable information. We believe in such joint initiatives that manage to coalesce on their own and come to the aid of others who want to give shape to ideas, be it product design, furniture, repair or restoration.

In progress

Future plans, professionally, are already happening. With the successful completion of a few small scale design projects, I have gained the confidence to make decisions on a larger scale, so we are currently working on personal experimental projects or collaborations to realize product, interior and architectural design projects.