chmara.rosinke is a design studio based in Vienna and Berlin that since its creation in 2011 combines craftsmanship with a conceptual and ecological approach. Ania Rosinke and Maciej Chmara, the names behind the studio, met during their architecture and design studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk. Their shared passion for design blossomed into cooperation and subsequently designs that carefully consider details and emotions objects and spaces evoke in people. Their projects have been shown during the Milan, Dutch, Paris, New York and Vienna Design Week, as well as in MAK, the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, and other international design fairs and exhibition. For Contemporary Lynx they show us a new studio.
chmara.rosinke: Ania Rosinke and Maciej Chmara
What is your morning routine?
Discussing who gets up to make the coffee (Ania does it more often). Then, working as much as possible before the kids wake up.
What is the first thing you do when you arrive at your studio?
We don’t really have a routine.
Do you prefer Instagram, Facebook, or no social media at all?
Instagram.
Which magazines and books are you reading?
Damn, besides books on design and architectural theory, we’ve been recently reading a lot about food culture, gastrophysics, and some contemporary literature – Ania mainly Polish, Maciej more German.
Which three objects would you say are essential to your work?
Ania: pencils, time (Ania doesn’t need the third thing).
Maciej: Circular saw, domino router and a pencil.
What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?
Ania: Mine’s quite basic, a notebook with a to-do list.
Maciej: Anything from Festool.
chmara.rosinke
What inspires you and motivates you to get your work done?
Maciej: New hardware stores with plenty of strange things and bright colours.
Ania: Magical stores with old stuff… furniture, ceramics, treasures, all mixed up
Can you tell us a funny story from your work?
We are very serious people.
What is the project you are working on right now?
We are always working on a couple of projects simultaneously.
The current projects are a new mobile kitchen, an extreme shelve, a bed, and a kind of office furniture collection.
What do you love about your job? What don’t you like?
Maciej’s like: Prototyping and the time spent in the workshop.
Maciej’s dislike: Negotiating money.
Ania’s like: Changing the character and the scale of the projects.
Ania’s dislike: Negotiating with craftsmen or companies, when they did something wrong or not according to our drawings.
chmara.rosinke
Do you prefer hand-made or mass-produced?
Maciej: I don’t care, both have their advantages, and both can work well if they reflect the intention of the object.
Do you work individually or with a team?
Both.
How do you rest and relax after work?
Maciej: In the bathtub.
Ania: Eating, then a bathtub.
Do you have any advice for anybody who wants to work in your field?
Get someone else to do your admin and money related stuff.
The article was created thanks to the Arts Council Emergency Response Fund: for organisations (non NPO). Contemporary Lynx organisation is supported by Arts Council England.
