Designer Ronan Bouroullec moves between mediums, materials and scales with ease. To each new project he brings a philosophy of thoughtful, empathetic design. We asked Ronan – in conversation with writer Laura Houseley – how the Maasto family of furniture for Vaarnii reflects his design ethos, and how he got away with introducing plywood to the Vaarnii range.
LAURA HOUSELEY: Shall we begin at the beginning? Do you want to tell me how the project to design Maasto began?
RONAN BOUROULLEC: “I received a message asking if I would like to work for Vaarnii. There were two things that immediately resonated. The first was ‘Finland’ – I am in love with Finland. And then the pleasure of working with a new company. For me, this idea was like fresh air. I was busy with other things at the time, and it took me a full year to respond.”
LH: In that year, were you considering the proposition?
RB: “It was on my mind, yes, but I wanted to take time to observe, to watch a bit. I was surprised by Vaarnii’s first collection, I liked it a lot. When Antti Hirvonen (Vaarnii co-founder) asked me to begin, I was pleased to find that the commission was very precise. I like that. The subject was a chair that would be light and use less wood than previous Vaarnii chairs.
I worked hard. Pine is a material that I like but it can be difficult because of its strength. Furniture requires more material because of it. And yet a chair is a small animal… so it is difficult to get right. And then there is the issue knots, they are part of the materials beauty, but they are also a nightmare! When you are looking at measurements for sections and in the middle, you find a big knot… it can be charming, but it depends where it is positioned. So, I proposed an answer to the problem that was outside of the remit: I suggest we use pine plywood to gain strength and reduce thickness.”
LH: Vaarnii had only used solid pine before that. How did they take it?
RB: “They took a month to consider it (laughs). To consider if they could accept this terrible, irregular proposal. They eventually said yes.
Vaarnii saw that this was another way to use pine in their collection and possibly a means to revive the pine plywood business in Finland. But of course, it is complicated to restart a dying industry. So that was the beginning; how to mix solid pine, this massive wood, with thin plywood cut in a strong but also delicate way.”
LH: Had you worked with pine previously?
RB: “Yes, I’ve worked with pine. My parents' house in Brittany has a beautiful pine floor and staircase and I own some pine pieces that have aged beautifully. Pine is a marvellous material. I like the grain and of course… although a bit less, the knots…”
LH: How do you imagine the Maasto Chair and Maasto family of dining furniture being used?
RB: “It is very difficult to consider the use of the Maasto chair. Because if an object is good, it can be used anywhere. Maasto is such a special animal… it looks great in my bourgeois apartment in Paris – a caricature decorative 19th century space – for example. There is a strong contrast between the interior and the chair, but it works. There is something abstract in Maasto’s materiality; it is so special, so bizarre. I was happy to see that it worked so well in this foreign context.”
LH: You mentioned your love of Finland. You and I share that appreciation. When did it begin and why?
RB: “The first time I was invited to Finland was at the beginning of my career, around 1989. I visited Iittala and Nuutajärvi [Editor’s note: the famous Finnish glass factories]. Designer Konstantin Grcic and I drove around in a van with a fridge in it, like a rock band. And it was snowing and snowing so hard that we could hardly see the road.
During that visit I discovered Kaj Franck, Aaltos, and the Finnish people. Finnish people have a very precise sense of material, a strong sense of things. They are both sympathetic and abstract and have an emotional relationship with the landscape, the trees. There is this idea that you do something well, and you do it with intelligence and patience.”
“Finnish people have a very precise sense of material, a strong sense of things. They are both sympathetic and abstract and have an emotional relationship with the landscape, the trees.”
LH: And you returned and worked with other Finnish brands.
RB: “Yes, that visit was my first experience. I’ve returned several times since. And I continue to collect Finnish designs. In fact, the Vaarnii team took their breakfast this morning out of some new Kaj Franck tableware. I don’t think they noticed.”
LH: You mention a very singular approach to materiality as a Finnish style of making: An intense focus and concentration on a single material, a dedication to learning the necessary skills. Is it important for you to work with companies who embody that?
RB: “Of course. It is becoming more and more difficult to work in this way because companies often manufacture elsewhere, and it all becomes a very abstract process. You can lose the sense of materiality. Because of that I am lucky to be an old designer who has already had those experiences and can make things myself. For me, the pleasure is always to visit the factory, feel the sawdust, and see how people manipulate a piece of wood. It is like a piece of raw fish, like sushi, that you must cut in a certain way. If you respect the material in your hand, it becomes something much more.”
“For me, the pleasure is always to visit the factory, feel the sawdust, and see how people manipulate a piece of wood.”
LH: I noticed that you have close and long-lasting relationships with a handful of skilled manufacturers who you often speak very highly of. How important is it to you to have long-standing, trusted collaborators like these?
RB: “It is the best way to work; with people that you like. But, also, being a designer is often about diplomacy: you need to understand the people in front of you, the machine in front of you and understand many people’s points of view.
It’s funny, when I first began working, I thought to be a good designer was to invent things. But now I know that it is so much more: you must be empathetic, to give a good answer to a proposal you must consider everything; the object must be strong enough, small enough, big enough, fit in a box, comfortable enough… There are so many aspects to consider.”
LH: Do you ever tire of the problem solving?
RB: “No, I am still passionate. Sometimes I can tire of the way some companies work. But Vaarnii works in a very specific way, they are very focused and understand the world. I get a lot of energy from that. I have always thought that if you love what you do and it is full of passion, there is a good chance that you will find other people who share the same view. If the objective is only to sell the most, I am not so interested in that.”
LH: Working across different mediums must also give you energy?
RB: “It is the beauty of this discipline. I feel that I am not a specialist, I am a generalist who works with specialists. I enjoy being confronted with a situation where I can be naive and then work with people who are experienced. I like to learn. I like to be confronted with situations like this. It’s a way of not repeating myself too much, which I hate. In the instance of Vaarnii, it was good to learn more about pine and particularly about the defects, the knots for example, I found it challenging and I enjoy that.”
“I feel that I am not a specialist, I am a generalist who works with specialists. I enjoy being confronted with a situation where I can be naive and then work with people who are experienced.”
LH: What can we see of your philosophy, your way of thinking, in Maasto?
RB: “Maasto has a quality that I can’t explain. It is an object that I love but I still do not know exactly why! (laughs).”
LH: Please try to explain!
RB: “Well, I think, firstly, it has a new geometry, it is a new way to build a chair. There is no other chair like Maasto. There are a lot of good reasons for mixing solid wood and plywood and for the way the pieces look. We managed many practical problems like logistics and material stability well, including the linking of two different materials; the massive pine expands with humidity and the plywood is stable – we had to find a way to make these two opposite materials work together.
Also, considerations like price and how to maximise sections cut from the plank. I concentrated a lot on the back of the chair as it is the angle you see most when it is set against a table. I like the way the different angles appear and how the pieces are joined together. It is difficult to do something new with wooden furniture and this is new.”
LH: Although there is less material, the Maasto chair has a directness and bluntness that I think is completely Vaarnii in spirit.
RB: “That was the goal. I wanted to design a chair for Vaarnii. I think Maasto was a good answer to the question put to me and I like the chair very much. Yet, it is a strange animal (laughs).”
LH: Maasto is the first Vaarnii furniture family to feature the new black finish. What are your thoughts on the finish?
RB: “It totally changes the perception of the object. It makes it a little more ‘normal’. I was very happy to have the advantage of it. Pine is interesting but your eye can be disturbed by its grain and pattern. If you just want to think about precision and geometry, then the black helps you to do that. Very often a wooden chair with colour seems heavy but here the stain is delicate, like ink, so you can still feel the grain and still see the pattern of the wood. I think it is very nice.”
LH: Now you are at the end of this project, do you have any reflections?
RB: “I am just left thinking; ‘what is next?!’”
Discover Maasto
See also:
• All products by Vaarnii >
• All designs by Ronan Bouroullec >
Text: Laura Houseley Images: Jussi Puikkonen