Alexander Lervik

Press / 2006

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Sweden's coolest view Gadget news for the garden Unique outdoor furniture - ... for long spring evenings

fantastic weekend dreams

Spring's most stylish shopping trend

Alexander Lervik is the hottest design star

Upgrade the home with this year's news

of signs in ... and Tokyo.

The fantastic TV-Chair, with LED screens in the back and seat!

The price of success

Modular chair with removable support, can be converted into a three-seater sofa

At the Neptune table you do not need to

move from the armchair to reach your drink.

Alexander Lervik's ideas are conquering the world. Here, one of design Sweden's sharpest minds talks about flashes of genius, money, and when life fell apart...

Text PETTER EKLUND Photo CAMILLA SJÖDIN

There is something that no money in the world can whip up and guarantee: a flash of genius. Nothing is as magnetic as a good idea. It can be simple or complex, fast or slow, but the origin is always that little light bulb in the head, Gyro Gearloose's "ding". The designer Alexander Lervik is one of those ding-people, constantly charged with impulses, brainstorms, projects. On Lervik Design's website, ideas surge and flow between restaurants and art. Here you can see sofa furniture for Skandiform and Johanson Design, Italian alien knobs, and "small-happy" items for the Japanese mail-order company Askul. It can be quirkily trendy with retro, but always with a playful twist, a "Lervik feel" that turns objects into personalities.

The inventor himself is no Design Doctor Frankenstein, but a recently divorced 35-year-old with two children and a head full of work, worries, and fun. He has just moved into a permanent home again and rediscovered balance in life with tidal children who come and go every other week. A new sorrow in the midst of the product flow, but perhaps also a realization that new times create new family patterns.

The red-and-green glowing door handle Brighthandle (2000) is the Lervik item that most people know. The idea came to him in the hallway of a design hotel in Milan and was a spontaneous reaction to all the "Do not disturb" and "Please clean" signs tangled on the doors. "I thought that where you put your hand, that is also where you should communicate."

The form was initially kept simple — a bent steel tube — in order to attract as many manufacturers as possible. And quickly Lervik had around a thousand interested parties from 43 countries, but no production. For the launch, he founded the company Brighthandle, which was later bought by Assa Abloy.

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"The world's largest lock manufacturer buys the world's smallest," the press wrote.

But it was not just a large company gobbling up a small one and throwing the product onto a warehouse shelf, but a strategic purchase of a flagship product intended to shine red and green across the entire group. Today, Alexander Lervik is a design consultant for his glowing idea, and several variants have been developed.

The Lervik ideas flow in two streams. Deep inside are the idea-driven products, prototypes, and sketches, the experimental play bordering on art.

On his table lie two curious plastic gadgets; one of them consists of two cogs impossibly mounted at an angle to each other, yet they turn smoothly. "With the ability to print shapes using 3D printers, designers will eventually face the same problem as musicians, when people download the file of a chair and print it out..." he says, showing a prototype for a restaurant plate, printed in thin plastic layers in a sintering machine. The technology is expensive today, but tomorrow brings dizzying possibilities: surgical design, nanotechnology, save-the-world items, and a new kind of beauty that no one has thought of yet. Light is important in Lervik's playhouse. He experiments heavily with diodes, fiber optics, and shadows. It is a play that draws attention. The self-illuminating swing Sense (2005) is a poetic product that quickly shimmered on 30,000 sites worldwide and in foreign newspapers. The light tree Light Tree (2002) in metal with two kilometers of fiber optics was purchased in 120 copies for the Italian fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna's stores. The manufacturer SAAS Instruments in Finland had to build an entirely new factory. The chair Red Chair (2005) is a sittable "graphic view" with steel wires casting a beautiful shadow. It was acquired by Nationalmuseum and the Röhsska Museum, and for the Swedish Association for Art's lottery. Ten pieces were made.

Alexander Lervik with the prestigious Red Chair, produced in ten copies and acquired by Nationalmuseum.

THE PRICE OF SUCCESS

and ceiling lamp.

Last autumn the family went It resulted in a couple of

Among public commissions, nightclubs and shoe stores shine brightest.

Ermenegildo Zegna.

Alexander Lervik's other side is store and restaurant interiors, which flutter to him as quick, grandiose jobs. He has created many environments for commercial, pleasure-seeking city life: Rizzo stores, Establish, NK, Spy Bar's VIP room, Café Stureplan, the club White Room, and Sturecompagniet, with the V-club's neoclassical overdrive where the dance floor is laid with 50,000 crystals on a diode bed. Photography forbidden.

"You can be extreme in those environments. I love the intensity of those jobs, setting the final details, standing and polishing a mirror five minutes before opening time," he says.

The interiors are quick jobs — Sturecompagniet took six weeks — but they also disappear quickly, often within a year or so. A store interior should be able to last for five years.

But the tempo takes its toll. Last autumn, the Lervik family took a break and traveled to Asia on an "inspiration trip"... well, it resulted in a couple of good ideas, but also in divorce. Alexander's toil with Brighthandle had worn life down. Once the company was sold, they were going to go on a long trip. It took place, even though the divorce was already underway. "It was still a wonderful trip; just the children's schooling in Thailand was an adventure."

Alexander designed the coat rack No Way on the beach, inspired by the proliferation of signs in Asia, and sent the drawing in an email to manufacturer Johanson Design in Markaryd. "The rack was ready when we got home in January and premiered at the Furniture Fair."

There is always a horizon. Alexander Lervik's relaxed attitude toward ideas came with his mother's milk. His mother, Lena Lervik, is a sculptor, with numerous public works behind her and still working. His father was a Telia engineer. Alexander grew up between the two creative poles. "Mom had her studio, there was always clay at home, and I was allowed to be creative, unleash my imagination."

THE PRICE OF SUCCESS

The extensive product catalog is characterized by a wealth of ideas and simple elegance.

The Advent candlestick Tradition keeps the moss safe behind the glass.

The global hit Brighthandle, the toilet handle that lights up red or green.

Finances were shaky, but people stood by what they did and things always worked out somehow. That has influenced Alexander. "I am fearless when it comes to finances. It's probably a matter of upbringing."

When his Brighthandle company was on its knees in 2003, he was short on money. Alexander designed an Advent candlestick to put food on the table.

"The whole family and my father-in-law were involved, sitting in the basement polishing the items. One company wanted candy canes in their candlesticks, so I had to run out and buy them."

The candlestick was designed in September. In October it was in stores, by then 1,600 pieces had been sold, and the family finances were saved. The memory of that episode is very important, a reminder of realities. The design hype is a spectacle that requires a lot of hush-hush about money and real success. Unknowns sell, celebrities scrape by. The "fine" are seen, less hip players rake in the dough in the media shadow. In that landscape, Alexander Lervik feels like a fast-working realist. "If I make a hundred things and a couple turn out less well, I can live with that. The big challenge is to design a chair that is just a chair and still get sales on it."

New Lervik projects include a couple of nightclub interiors in Gothenburg, "now I have eight weeks", a new chair, "the most advanced thing I have done", and a lighting exhibition in October. He wants to have it in a rock cavern somewhere in Stockholm.

On the computer screen, inventions glimpse: a lamp in the shape of his scanned brain, "you could imagine a whole series with the brains of different thinkers", a skeleton lamp, and quite a few other things that no one is allowed to see yet. With a delighted smile, Alexander Lervik snaps his laptop shut. Playboxes, secrets—they are fun.

"Mom is a sculptor, there was always clay at home and I was allowed to be creative, my imagination was unleashed early on."

During spring and summer evenings, the fiber-optic swing Sense offers a spectacular

English translation of the original article. Text read from the scanned original; small transcription errors may occur.