When she couldn’t find modern, well-designed children’s furniture for her son, architect Anne-Sophie Rosseel built her own, which led to the founding of design studio House of RoRo
Photography courtesy of House of RoRo
Interview by Sonia Zhuravlyova
ICON: Why did you want to start the collection?
Anne-Sophie Rosseel: It’s a project that I’ve been working on for a long time. Basically, since my kid needed a chair! I was building furniture for interior design projects, where there’s often custom needs. We needed something that was a window bench and also had storage inside. There was nowhere to find something exactly like that, so I thought, let’s just make it, and so I launched House of RoRo. And it was fun making these things and using our home as a testing ground. The positive reaction from people who’d come over and say ‘Oh, my God, this is great’ kept me going.
ICON: Was the children’s furniture market missing something like this?
ASR: To me there is a lack of thoughtful children’s furniture out there – it’s all very short term. What I’ve noticed is that there is a lot of plastic and it’s all very cutesy, but you don’t tend to hold on to these things and they usually get thrown out. And so doing versatile design that has a longer lifespan made sense: things that can be converted from toy storage to an extra seat when you have friends over, for instance. I’m thinking as a practical mum here – you want to get all the toys out of the way but at the same time it’s fun for kids to interact with and we’re also delivering beautiful furniture that’s really cool.
Photography courtesy of House of RoRo
ICON: Please describe your design process.
ASR: I wanted to be my own client for once. To have an idea and bring it to reality without too much interference. And it was a very fun scale to work at. I’m an architect and I like this immediacy between drawing something and seeing it materialise pretty quickly. I wanted the collection to be affordable, I wanted it to be local and I didn’t want to go to Asia. Then also I needed to be able to test things and build them. So, I simplified the designs and sent them off to a CNC shop and puzzled them together and kind of learned from that. The whole process that happened between those first models made for our home and the collection that came out just now – understanding what product design is about, how to put something out in the market and how to be able to offer it a certain price point – it was all fascinating.
ICON: Talk us through your choice of materials and pigments for this collection.
ASR: All furniture is primarily made out of birch plywood, which proves to be the most durable and versatile material for children’s furniture. My friend, the artisanal dyer Audrey Louise Reynolds, developed a series of wood stains for us made out of all-natural pigments such as mushrooms, flowers and moss. Mixed with bio-based wood finish, these dyes can be applied to the furniture for a uniform yet slightly transparent colour wash. I also have some ideas about doing some custom finishes and collaborating with artists.
Photography courtesy of House of RoRo
ICON: Was it important to create something that the children could put together themselves?
ASR: My son was always there so he helped me assemble the pieces and helped to finish them. It was a very gratifying process, playful and really educational for him to take something like a sheet material and turn it into a functional object. I think it’s very fun for kids to participate in the creation of their own furniture.
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