Brave Space is a group of Brooklyn-based furniture designers, Nikki Frazier, Sam Kragiel and Jesse James Arnold. Their creation has a tinge of multi- functionality which caters to both home as well as office setting. The trio is dedicated in providing quality, high end furniture while slotting in designs that are both playful and modern. Their approach towards the design and construction has influenced their material choices and has led them towards the use of materials that are both durable and environmentally sustainable.
I personally like their unique idea of coming up with ‘hollow furniture’ because of its sneaky storage capacity. In an email interview with us, they expatiated more about their designs, scroll down to see for yourself,
1. You have taken part in Brooklyn Designs, ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Festival) as part of Green 6, and Haute Green exhibits. How has this kind of recognition benefited your career?
Brave Space: They have all proved to be valuable marketing and press opportunities for us and were a great chance to meet customers as well as lots of people in our industry. This past year was our third year doing the Brooklyn Designs Show and it has a very large outreach while at the same time keeping a local community feel about it. I think that’s what we really enjoy about it. All of those shows are a wonderful chance to get exposure and they provide momentum for us to put our new designs into production.
2. Do you feel that there is some kind of evolution in your work?
Brave Space: Our work has evolved into slimmer, cleaner designs continuing to minimize the amount of material it takes to make durable, long lasting furniture. We’ve incorporated our ‘hollow logic’ as a building method into different types of products and have developed an expanding line of objects that relate to each other as permutations of similar forms.
3. What is your most popular product and what is your personal favorite, why?
Brave Space: One of our most popular products is our Bamboo Stagger. It’s pretty cool because it was the first piece we designed before we started Brave Space. It has been refined over the years of course, but it makes a really beautiful modern shelving unit. Other popular products are the Hollow End Table, Tetrad Flat, and the Coat Range. We all dig the Delta Desk & the Brave Lounge (which we just started making in multiple colors).
4. Is there some kind of motif running in your creation, if yes, what is it?
Brave Space: Our products are designed as modern pieces with clean lines and interesting angles. In many cases we like to incorporate usable spaces into the structure, such as in our Hollow Line. We’ve been described as having a 70’s vibe, which is fine with us.
We also like put our efforts into more playful designs and overall it gives our Brave Space Product Line some fun character.
5. Talking about furniture designs, I’d like to ask, what are the emerging trends that you have witnessed? And how would you describe the present consumer oriented market.
Brave Space: I hope to call it more than a trend (perhaps a movement or lifestyle change) but the growing awareness towards green products and sustainability are very prevalent now. It’s so important, as it should be, and at the same time, with the same change I think there will be a new type of consumer that emerges. We’ve been so distant for so long about what is in the products we buy and what our money really goes to and what our purchases really mean and I think that may start to change. We have so many resources now to learn more about what we are buying and we have the availability to be more conscious in our buying power.
6. Since you aim at creating environmentally-friendly furniture, I’d like to ask, are eco-friendly raw materials (that you employ) more expensive?
Brave Space: They are definitely more expensive, but it is really worth it for us. Working in the shop with something like bamboo plywood, that is a cleaner material to use, it is also very straight and true, and as plywood itself it is a well engineered, reliable material. The FSC plywood that we use is not only cut from a carefully managed forest, it is of a higher standard/quality than your normal plywood. In a sense we’re passing this material and production quality on to the customer in our product.
7. You have coined a term ‘hyper-functional’ for your designs please, expatiate a little o’er it for our readers?
Brave Space: We began using that description about our Tetrad Shelving and the products in our Hollow Line. Our Tetrad Shelving is modular block shapes which can configure to any space you’d like (wall hanging or floor standing). Pieces in our Hollow Line have all these structural ‘innards’ that we’ve used as slender hidden storage. If you take away the storage you also compromise the structure of the shape, so it’s a dual or “hyper” use of function as structure. We’re always trying to up our functionality in the objects we make and living space is pretty tight here in NY, so we figure if you’re going to fill it with something, make it something good.
8. What are some of the common decorating mistakes made by homeowners? What’s your advice on how to avoid or correct those mistakes?
Brave Space: I think one of the most current issues is the huge increase in the production and purchasing of disposable furniture. I think it’s a combination of many things in our culture. We’re in a time when you can buy a large piece of furniture for dirt cheap, whether it’s been made with flake board or outsourced and made for very little money and turned into mass production. Many consumers are in the mind frame of impulse buying to the point of not being invested in what or where their money is going. And many buy into the newest ever-changing temporary trends. It’s a very common lifestyle and everybody is a part of it. Our advice would be to do your research and put your support in positive places, companies that you would like to see more of.
As a small furniture company, we design and build everything in Brooklyn, NY and really cannot compete with huge levels of mass production. We try very hard to keep our price points as reasonable as we can and it’s a little difficult to stay on the level that we are on, but we have clients that seek us out because they are looking for quality in the design, material and construction of the products and that feels pretty good. We hope to have our business grow on our terms and never have to feel as though we’ve sold out, undercut ourselves or compromised our work. Go Brave Space!
9. As you tread towards future, what do you expect from yourself and which are the things that excite you the most?
Brave Space: We’re excited to look forward to new eco materials popping up on the horizon and seeing new designs being executed with improved materials in mind. In our company, we want designing and building our products to continue to be fun for us, and for that to translate into our furniture.
Before signing off, I’d like to thank the trio of Brave Space for sparing out time in doing an interview with us, it is greatly appreciated. Also, I’d like to wish them success for their future endeavors.
Keep rolling, as more designs are coming your way:
