We visited Andu Masebo in his Hoxton studio to ask some quick-fire questions, encouraging instinctive answers only. Here's what he had to say.
What’s good right now?
There’s an expanding group of individuals in London who have ideas of how design can be done differently and are doing it themselves. It's a really special thing. People deciding to get the tools, make the objects, put them online and share them with their friends. Every key moment in history came from groups of dispersed people creating forward motion; stimulating each other to respond, change and collaborate.
Why is sound important?
I think silence is such a special thing. It's so rare we never experience silence. Even if you're in the countryside, there's always ambient noise. And in the workshop, I've realised ear protection is actually the thing I care about the most. You get used to the noise, but there’s such relief when you turn it off. So I think the importance of sound is less of it.
What about smell?
There's nothing that can tap more into nostalgia or your emotional state than a smell that you associate with something. It’s the access point for emotion.
What are your rituals?
I think ritual is deeply connected to the idea of practice. The idea of practice for the sake of practice, without an end goal in mind, just doing to do is the deepest ritual for a maker, designer, thinker to have.
Who is your design hero?
There's just one: Enzo Mari. Would I want to meet him? There’s a chance he would decimate everything I’ve ever done. No one that has had a career in design so far, has done it in the context of what’s happening today. I believe I can learn more from a generation younger than me, than the one that came before.
What do you need to work?
Living somewhere like London, it’s easy to get sucked into the productivity of your own output. ‘How can I tick the most things on my list?’ But the significant things can’t be put on a list. If you need space to achieve, then you need to create the greatest surface area to be fed inspiration from. Through conversation, observations, experiences. Or just walking a different way home from the bus stop.
What’s an everyday object you would prefer not to live without?
A notepad. If I lose my notepad, I’ve lost six months of thinking.
What’s the best advice you've been given?
I think people do give me advice but I choose not to listen to it most of the time. To do stuff in the world, you have to have conviction in what you think. How to respectfully not listen to someone. If that makes me stubborn then...
Which everyday object is most undervalued?
It's a beautiful question, but a hard one to answer. Generally, things are undervalued when they don't cost a lot. Value is the relationship between worth and expense, and I’m just generally fascinated about how value can be created for something by its experience, not by the precondition.
