Kjetil Smedal is an Oslo-based designer and craftsman, and recently completed his master’s in design at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Stepping beyond academia, he is eager to engage with the larger community of designers and introduce a fresh and experimental perspective. Although a woodworker by trade, his work strives not to be confined too much by concept and aesthetics, but rather reflects the shifting energies of human curiosity. At the core the practice revolves largely around the very act of making itself— tactile explorations of our ability to give form to the physical world around us.

“For my Unika project I found inspiration in the piles of discarded wood in the back of Hamran’s workshops - odd bits and off-cuts too irregular to fit into their typical production. I am interested in ways of activating these materials, combining their raw qualities with equally direct and honest means of construction. Rather that shaping the material itself, I am exploring ways to assemble it into larger forms by utilizing physical concepts like tension and friction, by the use of simple, intuitive tools such as wedges. I hope that my contribution can inspire the general discourse on using discarded materials, but on a larger scale also challenge how we perceive the constructed world around us, promoting our capacity for wonder.”