Warsaw, 16 October, 2023 – As of October this year, the Paged brand has again started a didactic cooperation with the School of Form at the SWPS University in Warsaw. Jakub Szczęsny, artistic advisor at Paged Meble, has started a semester of classes with students, during which creative forms made of wood and plywood will be created. Second and fourth year students will take part in the project.
Paged has taken another step in expanding its didactic cooperation with universities. The brand’s educational project with the School of Form at SWPS University in Warsaw includes classes in the subject of Furniture Design. Jakub Szczęsny, chief designer and also artistic director of Paged Meble, led the introductory lectures and will supervise the students’ work for a semester. The completed works will be presented after the end of the semester.
The second-year students will be tasked with demonstrating plywood as a creative medium that offers a wide range of design possibilities, including creative play. They are to create a system design of up to three types of elements that allow for different configurations, and the more possible variations, the better. Students can use indirect and direct connectors, and the structures that emerge may or may not have a useful function. The non-obviousness of the solutions and the presentation, of plywood as a creative medium are some of the most important criteria for evaluating the assignment.
– „We want to awaken creativity and out-of-the-box thinking in young artists, future designers. In this class, they will be involved in designing with wood and plywood, trying to apply the knowledge they have gained in practice. In doing so, it is important to take an out-of-the-box, creative approach. The focus is not on making the forms usable and functional if there is an interesting, yet abstract idea. What we want to show is a medium that is a vehicle for amazing designs and to bring out creativity in design in students” – explains Jakub Szczęsny, artistic advisor at Paged Meble.
Fourth-year students are tasked with creating a functional gadget from waste from furniture production. To this end, Paged Meble donated 15 sets of various types of plywood fittings, bent, planed and pressed elements, as well as several bags of wooden and textile waste. It is from these that the objects are to be created, which will present an equally out-of-the-box approach to the theme, and will be based on recycling production waste from furniture.
– „In the fourth year, the School of Form’s collaboration with Paged Meble takes place as part of a course called ‘Business Project’, which we implement at the final stage of education. The aim of the course is to throw students into a situation that resembles their future real work environment. This gives them the opportunity to apply the knowledge they have gained so far to solve specific problems, learn how to communicate with the principal by responding to a design brief and work with real world constraints such as material and technology. ‘I think it’s very important and necessary skills training before they leave university and enter the professional market” – says Anna Bera, an artist and designer who teaches design classes at School of Form.
This is yet another collaboration between the Paged brand and the School of Form SWPS in Warsaw. During the previous edition, students created designs from plywood and from waste material generated during its production, using CNC technology. The materials for these tasks were provided to the school by Paged. The effects of their work, in the form of small furniture and utilitarian objects, were presented in the form of an exhibition at the Paged Sklejka headquarters in Pisz, at the SWPS University in Warsaw and during the autumn edition of the 2022 Pretty Things Fair.
Media contact:
Magdalena Kicińska
Communications Manager at Paged Wood
magdalena.kicinska@paged.pl
+48 725 520 874
About Paged:
Founded over 90 years ago, Paged is now one of the five largest plywood manufacturers and the third largest producer of wooden chairs in the European Union. It employs over 2,000 people and has a total of seven production facilities in Poland and Estonia. It offers innovative solutions and products that are used in a wide range of industries such as interior design and furnishings, construction, transport and packaging in nearly eighty markets worldwide.
Since 2019, Paged has been developing and implementing technological and product innovations based on the unique competences of its own research and development centre, Paged LabTech. The companies owned by Paged: Paged Pisz, Paged Morąg, Paged Eesti, Paged Trade, Paged Meble, Paged LabTech, Paged Deutschland and BUK Ltd. are part of the Thumos Group, a private, industrial and investment consortium.
