Interview with Mate Meszaros

Mate Meszaros ("MM") interviewed on Tuesday, 5 May.

Could you please tell us about your experience as a designer, artist, architect or creator?

MM : We have over 10 years of experience combined in the architecture and furniture design field. We both have worked for internationally well know architecture offices.

How did you become a designer?

MM : We both studied different forms of art before becoming architects, although before enrolling university we both choose a more “rational” form of art pursuing our studies as architects further. During our university years our major interest were architecture and furniture design.

What are your priorities, technique and style when designing?

MM : In general we like to work with a lot of physical models or 3D printed pieces besides sketches before we would have a detailed 3d model of the furniture we work on. In our experience this process helps us exploring the full potential of our ideas, not having a feeling of being "done" too soon.

What particular aspects of your background shaped you as a designer?

MM : Curiosity might be the most important thing shaped us as designers. Exploring sometimes completely unrelated topics could result major breakthroughs in our projects, parallels can be drawn between many seemingly distinct fields.

What is your growth path? What are your future plans? What is your dream design project?

MM : Learning something new every day from different craftsmen and manufacturers shapes our thinking every day. We would like to reach and improve the lives of as many people as possible with our products design at our firm Tatamu. As architects and furniture designers we design buildings from urban scale to pavilions, usually paying the utmost attention to detail until the last door handle. We prefer projects that have the most impact on lives of people in need. Social housing or cultural spaces would be a good example with all the furniture included.

What is your day to day look like?

MM : We don’t really have a usual daily routine, for a period of weeks we can wake up early thinking about new ideas from the morning, while on other weeks we work until the morning.

How do you know if a product or project is well designed? How do you define good design?

MM : After the very first look at a design one’s have a generic feeling about the object. After more detailed inspection, of usability, materiality and aesthetics usually this first impression proves right.

Who is your favourite designer?

MM : Dieter Rams and Sugimoto Hirosi