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Friday Five with Benjamin Hubert

Benjamin Hubert was born in the UK in 1984, and he studied Industrial Design and Technology at Loughborough University, graduating in 2006. The London-based studio was founded shortly thereafter and specializes in industrial design across furniture and lighting sectors working with international manufacturers across Europe and Asia. The studio works on a diverse range of projects including both mass/batch produced consumer products and limited edition/one offs. Benjamin Hubert has received international critical and media acclaim and has been exhibited internationally.

Benjamin has also received a number of prestigious awards including: Design of the year (British Design awards 2010) Best Product (100% design/Blueprint awards 2009) Homes and Gardens Young Designer of the Year (Design Classic Awards 2010) and EDIDA International Young Designer of the Year 2010.

Five things that inspire me:

1. Woven fence
This is a close up of a timber woven fence in a north London park. I think it is both beautiful and functional and has an obvious hand crafted aesthetic yet these fences are produced on mass. That industrialization of craft is really important to our work and approach.

2. Handles
We love handles. That might be a strange thing to say!

But we take a lot of photos of them — this particular one is in a Swedish factory. I think the industrial colours and structures are really lovely. Its in these environments we get a lot of our inspiration. But essentially — obviously a handle is extremely practical — but we also find a lot of honest and quiet beauty in them,

3. Timber stack
This is taken in a Portuguese timber furniture factory. We like the dramatic transformation of something so wild — with its bark and age on show transformed in the hands of skilled craftsmen into something so engineered and controlled.

4. Hydrant
This is quite a dull photo possibly. But I’m really interested in found objects — particularly ones with a lot of industrial processes in them. So the heavy castings that form this hydrant are fit for purpose and have their own unique charm.

5. Graffiti
This is London for me. The studio is in north London and I live close by. I love the creativity and spontaneity of the city, its so vibrant. It always keeps me ticking over with inspiration. This image is a mini graffiti festival down the road from where I live.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.