The London designer in conversation.

Sam Hecht does not dwell on unimportant things. In 2002, he founded the Industrial Facility office in London together with architect Kim Colin and has since been designing amazingly simple as well as sophisticated companions for everyday life. Instead of losing themselves in the furniture industry, the duo also designs printers, telephones, lamps, clocks and kitchen appliances. A conversation about cable clutter, seeds and surveillance cameras.

Sam Hecht, the Wästberg you recently designed a luminaire that is meant to do more than just provide light. Explain to us what this project is all about.
In this design, we wanted to find out what lighting can be today. LEDs are made of diodes, circuit boards and microchips. They are part of the electronic world and not the electrical world like the light bulb still is. So we came up with the idea of making electronics itself the subject. One feature of the w152 light is that the switch can be programmed. If I just press it, the light turns on and off. If I press longer, I dim the light. The light remembers this brightness, even if it has been turned off in the meantime. We also integrated three USB ports into the base. The technology inside can detect if a smartphone, tablet or laptop is plugged in and automatically adjusts the amount of power transferred. In a very simple way, this light has intelligence.

Light fixture w152 for Wästberg / 2015 With the combination of light fixture and charging station, you reduce the domestic electronic waste.
Most charging stations are unhappily solved. That's why most people still have a tangled mess of cables hanging off the edge of their desk. Because USB has become the international standard, more and more devices need such a connection. The new Apple Watch needs to be charged every night. So you need a charging station near the bed that doesn't spoil your day when you wake up. That's why we deliberately kept the dimensions of the light compact, so that it can also be used as a bedside lamp. Conversely, it was important not to make it look like a gadget.

We met for our first interview during the Milan Furniture Fair 2007, where you presented the luminaire Beam for Established&Sons. In the past eight years, the lighting industry has been completely transformed by the triumph of LED. How do you interpret the new challenges?
You always reach the point where you have to decide whether to move more in the direction of aesthetics or function. With an LED luminaire, it's not easy to find the right middle ground. Because the light bulb has been with us for so long, the design around it has been able to become more and more mature and sophisticated. LEDs lack this experience, which is why many things seem immature. But that's the nature of progress (laughs).

Today, light has to be materialized because the light source itself no longer has a form.
Yes, LEDs are often smaller than a seed. The range of possible solutions is thus enormous. So is the probability of getting lost in these possibilities. I think that a luminaire must be given perhaps no symbolic value, but at least a clear physical presence. The point is not to reinvent the luminaire typology from scratch, but rather to develop the familiar. In terms of its form, the w152 is reminiscent of a light bulb. But the inside is empty. The light comes out of the base, is reflected at the top of the housing, and then exits downward. One advantage of this solution is that the heat from the LED is dissipated through the base, keeping the shade cool. Working with LEDs requires an understanding of all the mechanics involved. It is a knowledge that we designers must absorb in order to give a luminaire the right shape.

You could say: the hidden qualities of design play as important a role as the obvious ones.
Absolutely. And it will go more and more in that direction. If someone gave me their broken smartphone and asked me to fix it, I would have no idea what to do. But if they give me a radio or record player, I have a pretty good chance of being able to fix it. My father had an electrical shop. Then, as a kid, I started fixing the broken household appliances that customers brought back to the store. That was a good experience. But today, the gap between my brain and an ordinary telephone has become so wide that it no longer works.

Surveillance camera of the HQ Wireless Security System for Geneva / 2015 What effect does this technical complexity have on design?
I think that the inhibition to deal with technical products has become greater. Young designers in particular are put off by this. The unfortunate consequence is that many graduates only design wooden cabinets because these are real objects that they can understand. Just 20 years ago, it was normal for designers to turn to many different things. Today we have a completely different world.

What should be done?
I think education needs to change. Young people should not only learn the craft to design furniture. They should also learn technologies and programming languages. That's the only way they can understand that technology is accessible and bring in something they can be ahead with again. Today, it feels like a lot of designers are in a time warp. I think it's a little too easy thinking to quote forms from the past without countering them in their materiality. There's no reason to be afraid of technology. What matters is that designers incorporate it in a relevant way. It needs to feel comfortable and accessible. It's up to designers to take away people's fear of technology.

You are one of the few designers who design furniture and electronic products in equal measure. What experience have you gained from this?
One consequence is certainly that our designs are quite unpredictable. When we move like bees from one project to the next, the ideas also pollinate each other. So an electronics product can influence a light fixture, which in turn can influence a furniture or medical technology design. I love that because it generates new perspectives. Also, I've never thought of myself as a furniture or traditional product designer. That's partly because there are much better furniture designers than me. That's why we do at most one furniture project a year. We don't actively try to repeat ourselves or do projects just for the sake of it.

What product category is most exciting for you right now?
We often work in the office world. It took us a lot of time to understand how they work. I think that the office is a strange place. Many people spend more time there than in their homes. Yet most of the design energy is channeled into the home. The office world is still poorly designed and thought out. Another interesting topic is security systems. We have just designed surveillance cameras, smoke detectors and in-house telephones for a Swiss company, which customers can install in their own homes. What's on the market for this is ugly and complicated. There really is a lot of room for improvement! (laughs)

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