For Tim Teven, discovery happens in the workshop: pressing, bending, and deforming steel until unexpected shapes emerge into a detail he can turn into a design.
For Dutch designer Tim Teven, design is not about form-finding on paper or in 3D software. It’s a happenstance series of folds and bends when material meets machine. “The process is the part where I get my inspiration from,” Teven explains. “It starts with experimentation that involves playing around with the material and treating it in an unconventional way—with almost no goal in mind.”
It’s this experimental spirit that defines his studio in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Rather than beginning with a predetermined object—a chair, a table, a light—Teven trials different gestures: pressing, bending, deforming. And in this way, will often stumble onto unexpected outcomes, which are only then translated them into something functional. “I never sit down and start designing a chair. I design a chair if the process allows me to. The object and the function always come at the end of the process.”
Across each collection, steel is the raw material of choice. Although it was not a conscious decision at first. Teven grew up in a family of blacksmiths and steelmakers, with a childhood spent tinkering in the workshop. “My great grandparents were blacksmiths and the blacksmith shop evolved into a steel company when my grandfather and father took over. So I grew up in a metal environment and was always playing around in the workshop as a kid on Saturdays. Now looking back, I do feel proud to be continuing the heritage in my own way and my affection to the material and the industry is strong,” Teven shares.
The Tube series captures this heritage and his exploratory mindset in equal measure. Using a hydraulic press, Teven experiments with how steel can be deformed into unexpected shapes. “It starts with the machine. I have always been fascinated by the deformation of materials as a way of shaping,” he says. Each press leaves its imprint, a language of folds and bends that could never be pre-drawn.
Based in Eindhoven, designer Tim Teven grew up in a family with a long line of blacksmiths, and has explored new ways to develop steel furniture | Photography by Pierre Castignola
The Tube Collection by Tim Teven features consoles, shelves and a coffee table—all crafted with the signature bent steel details | Photography courtesy of Tim Teven
Embracing industrial processes that have evolved from an experimental craft approach, the Tube Chair is refined and sturdy | Photography courtesy of Tim Teven
While every piece is made in his Eindhoven studio, Teven describes the work as “industrial craftsmanship”—a phrase that reveals another duality at play. “The objects are handmade by using semi-industrial techniques, or methods that are inspired by industrial techniques. Also, the materials we use are quite industrial materials that are treated with a crafts-like mindset during the production.” This hybrid approach resists categorisation, as neither mass production nor purely artisanal craft.
While reticent to self-categorise his work into that of collectable design, for Teven, “the value of the work is the story and methods behind it. The final pieces are not standard furniture pieces, but something different. The time spent on making them is very illogical compared to industrially made furniture.”
As a method of invention, along with a mantra of being open to new challenges, Teven is crafting a unique dialogue between human craft and machine production. His work is proof that design can be discovered through the making.
Through a process of backwards design, Tim Teven deforms and press metal into different shapes to then discover potential details that could evolve into furniture | Photography courtesy of Tim Teven
The forms of each piece are crafted on machines, but managed by hand—producing sculpted, freeform furniture | Photography by Pierre Castignola
The process starts with experimentation that involves playing around with the material and treating it in an unconventional way—with almost no goal in mind.”
– Tim Teven
Photography by Pierre Castignola