Matej Štefanac

A Visionary Approach to Design

“We turn on ideas to shine environments.”

– Sergio Marchetti

It was the image of the technically sophisticated and geometrically intriguing PLUSminus lamp that led me to Matej Štefanac, a Slovenian architect and lighting designer based in Ljubljana, who specializes in innovative lighting and furniture design and 3D Renderings for real estate and product marketing. His studio is located in the Rog Center, a non-profit organization that offers Slovenian artists a space to create, including numerous prototyping workshops.

Matej’s first encounter with design happened in Italy, where he studied industrial and product design at the Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano). He remains a huge admirer of Italian design, especially of Achille Castiglioni and his visionary design approach of reusing existing materials and objects, giving them new life and new form. In 2007, at the SaloneSatellite in Milan, Matej presented his first furniture design project-the Alone in Kyoto chair, made of Slovenian wood. In 2017, the Alone in Kyoto chair was included in the special exhibition “20 Years of New Creativity” (a selection of the best products of the last twenty years, which were first on display at SaloneSatellite and later went into production), which honored the twentieth edition of the fair.

© Matej Štefanac: Alone in Kyoto chair in oak wood. Photo credit Janez Marolt

The chair has been described by the Italian curator Beppe Finessi as something that is “poised between origami that becomes furniture and the Czech Cubist Pavel Janák at his best”. The idea of the chair resulted from Matej’s unconventional thinking and the wish to explore uncharted territories. “I created the Kyoto chair almost 20 years ago, when I was still a student. It was probably the youthful enthusiasm that makes us believe that it is possible to change the world that played a huge part in its conception, like my reaction to the injustice of the world’s politics due to the failed Kyoto Protocol in 2006. I was also inspired by the art of origami and Shou sugi ban, an ancient Japanese technique of preserving wood by charring it with fire.”

© Matej Štefanac: Alone in Kyoto chair in black. Photo credit Janez Marolt

A technically flawless prototype of the chair was made by the inventor and innovator Karl Artnak. In 2018, the Alone in Kyoto became part of the philographic collection of the Rogaška Slatina Folk Museum, located in the Anin dvor Museum in Slovenia. The same year Matej presented his PLUSminus lamp at the Milan Design Week 2018, a strikingly attractive piece due to the feather-light minimalistic design and an unique sliding mechanism, enabling the adjustment by a softer finger’s touch.

The innovative simple mechanism allows a complete freedom of adjustment. The lamp slides horizontally and vertically, and rotates around two axes. Matej’s inventive concept of the PLUSminus lamp was awarded in 2018 by BIG SEE, a global platform honoring outstanding projects in architecture and interior design, originally launched in South-East Europe.

The design for the PLUSminus lamp has been sold to VERTIGO BIRD, a Slovenian contemporary lighting design brand, who reunites prominent names of Slovenian and international design such as Neil Poulton, Arne Vehovar, Alain Monnens, and Bevk Perović arhitekti among others. Thanks to the Centre for Creativity, the first Slovenian business development accelerator for professionals working in the creative and cultural sectors, co-founded by the European Union, Matej was able to present his lighting design such as the Gravità acoustic chandelier and the PLUSminus lamp on events like the Ventura Future in Milano in 2019 and the leading home decor fair MAISON ET OBJET in Paris.

The Gravità acoustic chandelier made of PET felt, aluminum and glass represents all of the key features of sustainable design. It is not only eaesthetically compelling, due to the geometrically playfull shape, that allows the user to rotate each panel separately, but also ecologically responsible due to thermoformed felt, a material sourced from recycled PET plastics most commonly used as plastic bottles. There are 267 PET bottles of 0.5 L inside one Gravità chandelier.

The purpose of this circular approach to design is to reverse the harm caused by linear production and consumption systems. The logic of this economy is in making the best use of material resources, thus reducing the input of new raw materials and avoiding the production of waste that may be unnecessary. Longevity, sustainability and minimizing waste are features present in the ensemble of Matej’s lighting design. As felt material has highly sound absorbing qualities, the chandelier is an ideal piece for high ceilings, concrete and glass spaces that tend to have bad acoustics.

The Gravità chandelier received the BIG SEE product design award in 2019, and was also presented at the Future of Living expo in Berlin in 2021 and in the Kunsthall Oslo (2019) in Norway, a non-profit art space showing contemporary international art. “When designing a lamp, I study mechanical and machine solutions in different fields”, explains Matej. He also explains the 3 key features of his design process: “First of all, when I am creating a new lamp I think of an element of surprise. The object needs to contain something new, not yet seen. Then, there comes the engineering part, meaning the functionality of a lamp. Equally important is the visual, esthetic aspect that needs to be adapted to the space I have imagined.”

“It was unexpectedly challenging to create a lamp that could be completely repairable by the user on his own”, explains Matej while talking about his PENDULUM lamp. This reading and ambient lamp has a movable shade which can be rotated by 90 degrees, and around a vertical axis even for a full circle. The innovative feature is the unique method of rotation with the help of a counterweight, which always keeps the bumper in the desired position. The lamp is almost entirely produced in Slovenia, and the design has been sold to Intra Lighting, a global provider of architectural luminaires and smart lighting solutions based in Slovenia.

PENDULUM has received multiple recognitions such as the 1st prize in the category of product design at Zagreb design week 2022, 1st place in product design at the Blick Fang fair in Zurich, Switzerland in 2023, price of the year at the Slovenian Month of Design 2022, and was also featured in the top 10 design products at the Milan Design week 2022.

Although Slovenia has a great potential in furniture design due to the quality of wood, as well as a long history in furniture production with Stol Kamnik, one of the major furniture fabricants of the 60s who produced the iconic “Rex” model armchair by designer Niko Kralj and MEBLO, one of the most important fabricants of the 70s, Matej concludes that it is challenging to succeed as a designer in Slovenia today due to weakened industrial production, and abroad, also due to greater competition, which requires even more effort. The challenge of a designer is always to offer something new to the user, with solutions that need to be seeked for outside of the realm of design.

Marrying the world of fashion and lighting design resulted in Matej’s collaboration with the contemporary ballet and dance wear Just a Corpse, founded by the fashion designer Uroš Belantič and model Valerija Kelava, and based in Slovenia. The TUTU chandelier in a limited edition and in various colors is a handcrafted tulle lamp designed to evoke a ballet-inspired atmosphere in any space.

Though he admits that interior design is also a field of interest, the main direction of Matej’s work is directed towards lighting installations, and a floor lamp will probably be one of his upcoming realizations, as he revealed. “One of my wishes is to create in wood, but there is a problem in flexibility of the material when creating small formats”, he adds. Despite all of the challenges in Slovenia’s industrial production, Matej proudly recalls the name of Niko Kralj, who’s chairs have become a key element of Slovenian cultural identity and part of modern European classics, due to their timeless forms. “Just knowing that the legacy of Niko Kralj exists in these spaces can bring a sense of optimism, faith and a reasong strong enough to pursue this path.”

More about Matej Štefanac:

official website: https://matejstefanac.com/

instagram: @matej.stefanac

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