Willo Perron’s Bed-In
As featured in Capsule Magazine, the LA-based designer explores furniture, bravado and amusement from the comfort of his own bed.
Appearing originally in the pages of Capsule Issue 02, Los Angeles-based designer Willo Perron stages a bed-in, exploring the role of the bed in contemporary life in conversation with the magazine’s publisher and creative director, Alessio Ascari.
Alessio Ascari:
For this story, we are shooting you in bed, specifically your FKA bed. The main inspiration behind these images was that photo of Hugh Hefner working from the Playboy bed. We wanted to play with the idea of a bed-in, from forms of counterculture protest in the ’60s to the bed mutating into a workstation in recent years. And then ultimately, it also remains, like, this lazy space. You have designed not only one but two beds, both extremely spacious and comfy.
Willo Perron:
Yeah, I did both of them for [the] interiors we designed: the Pillo Bed, which is sort of made of pillows and is an extension of the Pillo couch, and this one that's on the cover, which was originally made in a much bigger version—huge. But yeah, I agree with you. The formality of the domestic space has morphed, and now it's like we can lay around and work, and there's no central place to the home. There's no fireplace or even TV anymore. So a lot of my furniture is meant to be loungy and comfortable; it exists in this sort of in-between state.
AA:
Do you personally work from home a lot, from your bed? What is your relationship with what we are calling the “architecture of the bed?”
WP:
Well, for me, getting home and getting into bed is always, like, the reward of the day. Especially as I travel a lot—I'm sure you do too—and there’s nothing like getting back into your own bed with your sheets and everything. It's like a dessert, almost. And it's funny—in my house I have three bedrooms and I sleep in different ones depending on my mood. So there's one in the basement that's very dark and there's no noise. So if I need sleep and I want to have a long sleep, that’s where I do it. And then there's a Moroccan-style bed, which is where I do work and lay around, and I'm not afraid to eat snacks in there. And then the one upstairs is more traditional—very Zen. And it's in a room that’s quite bright, so I’m able to wake up very early with the sun. Also, I like the idea of just sleeping where you feel like sleeping. Sometimes you just want to fall asleep on the couch or on a chair outside.
AA:
Tell me more about the house.
WP:
It's a Spanish-Mediterranean house, and I kept the essence of it while also updating a bunch of things too. It's a bit of a hybrid of my style and a Spanish-style house. I like things that have life in them and I think that it's important that we're not just tearing down everything and building new things all the time—that there's a sense of spirit to things.
AA:
I read that you don't have a lot of books or art or images or objects at the house, that you kept it quite utilitarian.
WP:
Yeah. I keep most stuff at my studio. Tons of books and stuff. But I feel like I need to be able to come home and not be too distracted. Inspiration is a double-edged sword. And I just want my house to be a place to rest and where my head is calm. I love being productive and that sort of frantic energy of creating, but I try to keep that in my workspace. Because, if not, I just don't sleep.
AA:
And maybe there’s also a different kind of creativity that generates from a pure space.
WP:
Yeah. I feel like I can problem-solve so well in my sleep state. I've come up with tons of ideas and solutions right in between the waking state and the sleep state. I feel like that's where I'm most in tune with the subconscious brain.
AA:
That's interesting, because there is something dreamy about your aesthetic: a relaxing palette of light and earth colors, soft curving shapes, an emphasis on comfort and an underlying irony.
WP:
Comfort is key. The interaction with each object should be a lush experience that just envelops you. The beige and earth tones come from a place of wanting to focus on the form, without too much distraction coming from color or materiality.
AA:
And what is the foundation, in terms of your main aesthetic references and obsessions? Would you say there is a psycho-geography that defines your aesthetic?
WP:
My parents were hippies, and I was born in the ’70s; the breaking of formality pretty much dictated the design of that era. Just think of bean bags: they came out at this moment when we were deconstructing a lot of things. And that’s the context I came from. But I also grew up in the ’80s, and I just love the sort of bravado and exaggerated nature. So maybe my bed, like the bed we shot, sits somewhere in the middle of those two eras and concepts—it’s excessive but also comfortable, like a huge teddy bear!
AA:
Furniture design is a pretty recent development in your career, coming from a background in music and creative direction. You presented your first furniture collection at Matter Projects last year, featuring the Sausage sofa, the Dino collection etc. What drove you to start designing furniture?
WP:
All of my furniture has been birthed from interior design projects that we’ve done; I start trying to look for things that I really want and then I don't wind up finding it, so we design pieces instead. We're working on a bunch of new things, like a modular couch that you can sort of sleep in that's just a mound. My goal is to deconstruct the formal living room.
AA:
That reminds me of Italian radical design from the ’60s and ’70s, which is kind of the main inspiration behind Capsule. The tagline of the magazine reads, “Radical design and desire theory.” So I want to discuss this idea with you: What's radical design for you today?
WP:
Probably my biggest influence, aesthetically and in spirit, has been that era in Italy. They were deeply invested in trying to use design as a tool to make better living or future living. Going forward, I think our responsibility is material. We need to ask ourselves how these things exist out there in the world. How do they age? Can they be easily repurposed, or will they last forever? I’m kind of in my infancy stage as far as furniture design goes, but I think the next major step is the material revolution—because I don't know if there are many more shapes of a couch or a bed that we can extrapolate.
AA:
Yeah. Maybe another difference is that we are now in crisis-management mode. Back then, there was this strong sense of tense optimism and possibility towards the future. I don't think that it's there anymore. You don't really have hope for a realized utopia anymore.
WP:
But that's life cycles. I feel like the last 10 years have very much been a redo of the ’80s. There’s been this sort of nihilism. I think this will probably inform a new generation of inventors and designers that are going to start imagining utopia again. We're starting to come back around to the idea that it's okay to be exuberant and playful with color and design and things that don't necessarily work, simply because they’re great and it’s fun.
AA:
On that topic, one of the things that characterizes your work is an ambition to operate at a very large scale. You once told me that, unlike younger creatives, you’re part of a generation that’s not afraid of pop culture.
WP:
I love the concept of broadcasting—I love the idea of getting really great information and great work in front of as many people as possible. I like to think that my gateway drug into design was the Philippe Starck toothbrush. I was maybe 12 or 13 years old when I saw it. It was $20 dollars versus $2 dollars, or whatever, so quite expensive for a toothbrush. And that requires a certain commitment, but it was also cheap enough that a kid that was really obsessive about beauty and objects was able to afford it and have it in their hands every day and have some reverence for it. That Philippe Starck toothbrush literally changed my life.
AA:
That's a cool one.
WP:
In a similar way, radical designers were always anti-elitist. And they had a sense of humor about their work. Now it's like, you pose in front of the thing, and it's a very serious kind of portrait. One of my favorite photo shoots ever is going to be the Kar-a-sutra by Mario Bellini, with the mimes in the back of the car. I laugh every time I see it. It teaches you that your project doesn’t have to be reduced to a traditional hero shot. No, it should have a narrative. It should be funny or sad or something, but it needs to be about more than just a product.
AA:
Yeah, the Kar-a-sutra is such an iconic project. We’re actually running a special that’s all about Italian car design.
WP:
Man, my dream would be to design cars—6-year-old me would just lose his mind. But nowadays, it’s an industry completely dominated by ergonomic design, engineering, and the sex-and-fun part of it has gone completely out the window. The era you're talking about, the Pininfarina and Giugiaro and all those fucking guys—there was so much bravado to the cars!
AA:
Yeah, incredible. But, also, you had visionary CEOs that were really building cars that were thought-provoking to trigger change in society.
WP:
I remember when Marc Newson did that little car. That was the coolest thing. But then, of course, it never went into production. They're just showboating things, but nobody takes it all the way to the consumer. That's why I like broadcast. Take design objects off the pedestal and bring them in front of the people.
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