https://www.wallpaper.com/design/wallpaper-design-awards-2022-designers-of-the-year-objects-of-common-interest

Celebrate Wallpaper* Designers of the Year 2022 – Objects of Common Interest, founded by Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis – plus explore the shortlisted contenders

‘Objects of Common Interest started not with the idea to create a studio or commercial line, but as an exercise in small scale,’ Trampoukis told us in 2017. ‘It was an extension of working with architecture and making it more abstract,’ added Petaloti. ‘We are interested in volumes and how they interact, creating abstract shapes and elements that become objects.’

Over the past year, this mission has been brilliantly explored through multidisciplinary exhibitions and collections, and both in the virtual and physical worlds. They delved into the universe of Isamu Noguchi and his connections with their native Greece through an exhibition at the Noguchi Museum in New York, featuring objects inspired by the artist, as well as a digital portal expanding on his experiences in the US. They also went fully digital with Perfettooo!, a virtual exhibition platform curated by Maria Cristina Didero and Annalisa Rosso, for which they created imaginary spaces merging objects, collages, architecture, music and video. 

Their signature aesthetic, featuring compositions of soft geometries, was applied to furniture collections for galleries including Copenhagen’s Etage Projects, Milan’s Nilufar and Athens’ Carwan. Not confined to still objects, they created ‘Doric Columns, Kinetic Object’ for Kvadrat Febrik, a pair of fabric-clad sculptures inspired by classical architecture. 

’I love their capacity to use forms in an individual and coherent way,’ says Wallpaper* Design Awards judge Luca Guadagnino, who praises their ability to fill a space with objects, looking beyond their immediate function. They are ‘quiet yet impressive, intelligent yet delightful’, adds fellow judge Ilse Crawford, who cites their simple upholstered stools and benches for Dims as a great example of furniture that she’d use in her interiors projects. She also admires their respect for history (‘without being historic’) and the discreet nature of their work: ‘design that doesn’t have to shout to be outstanding’.