Leif.designpark: In The Shade Under The Fig Trees

(jiří macek) In the spirit of the Atlantico brand motto – Design Driven by Nature – the Japanese studio of Leif.designpark brings us a tree and a piece of an Atlantic beach.

You know the way it is. Having seen thousands of pine trees, all of a sudden, one pine in particular attracts your attention. It is similar to the previous ones; it grows upwards as they do; it has the same bark; but still, there is something more to it. Even though you have no idea what it is, you know you will remember this tree. And you will remember the furniture designed by Leif.designpark. It is not possible to say that they have come up with a new shape, approach, or technology. Nevertheless, they design discreet objects that could easily have originated in the past – however, one has a very strong feeling that they do not come from the past. One cannot stop thinking about them.

A trio of young Japanese designers - Takashi Ueno, Mamoru Naito, and Keizaburo Honda - founded the Leif.designpark studio in 2006. Apart from design, they focus on arts and interior design. The furniture that we are writing about was created for the brilliant Atlantico brand that comes under the Portuguese De La Espada brand. The Lin Pod Bench could easily pass as the flagship of the brand that is rooted in the feel of the Portuguese Atlantic coast, traditional local handicrafts, and the time that passes in a different way when one looks at the ocean. The Lin Pod Bench expressed all of this with one single look. As for Leif.designpark’s chairs and armchairs, one must simply sit on them. The unspectacular and simple solutions of thousand-year-old functions have a fine web of atmosphere in their version. Of course, this sounds a bit exaggerated when one speaks about a chair or an armchair; however, would you have misgivings if one spoke about a pine on the coast? See? You would not. If you try to plant a tree in the Lin Pod Bench pot, you will see it in full feather.

We will definitely come back to the Atlantico and De La Espada products. They are worth it. By the way, you can buy these products in Prague when Designblok starts. De La Espada, together with the Atlantico and Autoban brands, is brought by Konsepti onto the Czech market.

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