Czech eco-design makes British headlines

Czech designer Jan Čtvrtník has been receiving a great deal of recognition around the continent recently for one of his nifty pieces of glassware, highlighting the issue of climate-change. Čtvrtník’s vase - depicting a shrinking lake - won an international competition in Amsterdam in September, and has now been lauded by British newspaper The Independent for its environmentally-aware design. I spoke to Jan Čtvrtník, who’s currently living and working in Italy, and asked him first about the inspiration behind his award-winning piece:

Jan Čtvrtník

“It’s a glass vase by Alvar Aalto, he designed it in 1937. The vase is called ‘Savoy’ and there are rumours among those involved in design that it was maybe inspired by a Finnish landscape – by the shape of a lake or something. And so I took this as a premise, I took these rumours about Aalto’s inspiration and took them to be true. I started to think about how the lake would look today. I thought it would either be drier, or lower. So, I changed the shape of the lake and according to that I designed my vase. The shape of the old vase was the outer shape of my vase – it was a reference point, from which I could show the way the planet had changed, and how much we had changed nature.”

Your vase has already won an award for environmentally-aware design, or design that tackles climate change. When you made this, did you have a particular message in mind?

“Well, the competition was more about commenting upon rather than changing the environment. We were supposed to comment upon the environment through our design. And I realized that when you want to comment upon something, you have to show what was then, and what is now. So you need a reference point. And I just thought this original Alvar Aalto vase would be a great reference point for my work. So that was the basic thought behind the competition, and the Independent’s selection was based upon the same ideas as this Droog design competition”

Finally, do you have other green, or environmentally-aware, designs in the pipeline that we can look forward to soon?

“Well, every day I’m thinking about how to put an environmental message across, and how to design products in a green way. And now I am working for Electrolux in Italy, and one of the core values is to think in an environmentally-friendly way. So, every time I design something I am confronted with the need to make the product more sustainable. It is very hard though, but I am trying to do this, because it is my responsibility as a designer to offer people something which will not destroy the planet.”