HT: In our studio, we work a lot with sketches, models, and paintings. We use them as tools to capture the spirit of an idea. Just like in cartoons, we experiment with abstract and exaggerated drawings because caricature often holds the essence of a concept. When you create the right sketch, you recognise it immediately, and you must preserve it like a recipe to follow in the creative process. It’s like a “magic cube” that holds the flavour and essence of the idea… or, to put it more poetically, it contains the dream. The Canadian painter Barry Lereng Wilmont once said – if I remember correctly – that a work of art is born in the dream, grows in ecstasy, and ends in the aura of defeat, because no work can ever reveal the dream in its entirety, only a glimmer of it. In our work, we must strive to define the dream, the feeling, and the thought that an object carries, keeping them alive until the final realisation.

RZ: Your studio also had a headquarters in Shanghai until 2019 and in Asia. How does this dual perspective affect your design approach?

HT: I have always travelled a lot, and in a globalised world, it is essential to be open to the cultural stimuli around us. Someone once said: to design is to know how to see. The designer lives in sensitivity. For us, it has always been natural to find inspiration anywhere, often in the places where we least expect it. The beauty of other cultures lies in the fact that they see aspects of life through different eyes, and this also makes you reflect on your own culture.