In conversation with furniture designer Leonhard Pfeifer at Portuguese brand WEWOOD's flagship Lisbon store.

The designer Leonhard Pfeifer @pfeifer.design talks about his iconic Carousel sideboard. Watch the full conversation here to find out more about his design journey and the personal and professional motivations behind his move to Portugal with his family.

Video transcript:
I'm Leonhard Pfeifer.
I'm a furniture designer. I'm currently based in Porto. I was originally born in New Zealand and then studied design in Australia before moving to London where I established my studio. We were 20 years in London and then moved to Porto five years ago. So, my father was an antique restorer and I grew up in his woodshop since I was a young boy. I then went on and studied industrial design at university and then I worked in industry for a long time in a lot of different areas not connected to furniture. But furniture had a gravity that pulled me in and when I started working for myself (as a designer) I think I was lucky in that I could combine the skills from the production side with the more digital skills using early systems of CAD. As I'm designing now in my mind I'm working out the processes needed to shape every piece of wood, every component in a design as I'm going. I think that's an important step as a designer - to know that what you are designing can be produced - and even more (know) how it should be produced.

The Carousel
Carousel came out of a development that was initiated by a discussion I had with Gonçalo, who was then the creative director of WEWOOD. He wanted a sideboard with a surprising feature, something that really surprised people. I started developing different ideas of functions that I thought would be useful, but also a surprising element of a sideboard, and settled upon a rotating carousel. It was something I'd never seen in a sideboard before, but at the same time, it seemed like a very functional element to be adding, this rotating storage. For me, I think I always saw it as somewhere to store bottles and glasses, as part of a bar. (However) I think it has broader functionality than that, because when the slats are open you can use it to display (objects), but if it's rotated around, then it's kept safe as well. So designing the carousel was the first time in my design career that I was asked to add extra features. I think as a designer it's very easy to design something amazing but then price or production (considerations) come in (to consideration) so you're always bringing (the specification) down. In this case the original carousel had a wooden top and Gonçalo gave me feedback that he thought that we could make it even more special. We developed the marble top (however) a part of the issue was that behind the carousel the thickness of the marble gets very thin. We needed to develop a wooden collar that circled around the carousel itself, allowing the marble to sit on each side.

Working with WEWOOD
I think in any size business furniture development can take a long time. What can be really great about a smaller family-owned company is that you can talk directly to the decision-maker and have a project get the green light. Development can move forward quickly. Whereas in a bigger company there are more layers of meetings and defending decisions, so it can take a lot longer and working with a larger company.

Moving to Portugal
My father was Austrian, so I feel like I always had a pull to Europe. I think I would have believed (I would be living in) Europe, maybe, but not specifically Porto. We were in London for 20 years but we had a young family. London is a big city. It's an amazing city, but at the same time, it has the pressures that any big city does. We were thinking of maybe moving further out into the suburbs, and then we started looking at other places to move. We actually quite like Barcelona. We went to Barcelona several times for holidays and thought Barcelona could be a good option. I visited the WEWOOD stand at the Milan Fair, and Salvador invited me to come and visit the factory. So I came to Porto, just for two days. I went and saw the factory, met the team and then Salvador took me to a very ‘flash’ restaurant in Gaia that overlooks the Ribeira area of Porto.

We sat and had a port tonic (during which time) I just started thinking, actually Porto is a nice city as well.

End