I wanted to create a user-friendly, customisable, functional design that can be used in several ways. My focus was on solving the issue of the need for extra working space in busy periods. With the limited size of flat, one cannot always afford a desk of right size, hence the idea of unfolding. PLUSMINUS is a home variable workspace intended for anyone who works at a traditional desk. The user can customise it to fit the changing needs – at the stage of purchase, selecting proper version of elements from a catalogue, and later, during use, adding and removing components.
Aleksandra Piotrkowicz has combined sensitivity, a feature common to many students of the Academy of Fine Arts, with inquisitiveness, unfortunately less and less encountered at our school. In my view, it is a set of features just perfect for a designer, as evidenced in the degree piece, developed with subtlety and insight typical of the author.
Variable-top desks designed by Aleksandra Piotrkowicz are a brilliant answer to the need for extra space, experienced from time to time by every user of such furniture. The goal was achieved using a set of tops supported with a steel structure with several independent axes of rotation. In my view, the greatest achievement of the author was taming the complex technology, which was given bewitchingly simple and beautiful form.
As a teacher debuting in the role of degree supervisor, I am doubly happy with Aleksandra Piotrkowicz’s success. I believe that the PLUSMINUS desk presented at the exhibition is the beginning of a great design career.
dr Karol Murlak
B. 1991; studied at the Faculty of Interior Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the years 2009–2014. Scholarship under the Erasmus programme at École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré (space design) in Paris, September 2012 to February 2013. She works in interior, furniture, exhibition, and graphic design. Implements independent interior design projects for individual clients. Participated in exhibitions: WAWA Design Festival, Warsaw, 2014 and ELLE Decoration Młodzi na start post-competition exhibition, Gdynia, 2014.