Joel Escalona
February 4, 2009
JOEL ESCALONA
By Richard Mc Cusker
Hailing from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco, where he studied Industrial Design until 2006, Joel Escalona has in his short career to date been designing conceptual award winning products as well as home accessories and furniture. Joel describes himself as an industrial designer albeit, ‘more designer than industrial.’
Joel lives in Mexico City, where he was born in 1986 and works worldwide on his Virtual Studio, of which he is director, developing simple, practical and innovative designs, continuously driven by storytelling concepts.
For such a young newcomer to the design world, Joel has made his stamp on the design industry with his success in the ‘Volvo For Life Design Awards’, ‘National Competition of Furniture Design in American Hardwood’, ‘National Design Award in Stainless Steel’ and ‘Whirlpool Mexico Design Award’, all in 2007 – only 1 year after his graduation. These successes led to various exhibitions across the Americas and Europe.
Joel maintains that he is selective about where he takes his ideas from, however he has no particular signature style. He regards innovation as a real improvement, and not just any change for everything that is around us. His studio develops every kind of project where design makes the difference.
The MYDNA Bookcase, inspired by the DNA structure, is a piece of furniture very reflective of its name. The books you like, the music you own, the photos you keep, all that knowledge a person owns defines a significant part of their personal identity. MYDNA is available in several colours and in two presentations – Static MYDNA, which is one single structure and Rotating MYDNA for easy access to books and other objects stored on it.
The Dancing Table was designed to celebrate a culture. As if dancing together, the carpet and the table are inspired by Mexican Traditional Dance and Dress. In this case, the objective was to design something inspired by culture and folklore. In a country like Mexico, with such a variety of colours and identities, it was almost impossible to combine into one piece, so Joel looked at the dresses and the colours and captured the shapes made by dresses in movement, which resulted in the Dancing Table and Dancing Carpet.
The Dancing Table is a solid surface with small waves in the exterior edge, leaving plenty of space in the centre for a lamp or other occasional accessories.
A drinking chair for drinking – is it a glass or is it a chair? The Santos chair is inspired by the shape of a Champagne Glass made of glass fibre. This chair was designed by Joel Escalona for the Mexican company Grupo HeWi. This design was completely made with digital rendering and fine-tuned in the prototyping process.
Simple, sometimes impossible concepts, reflective of the designers personality, Joel tries to integrate numerous functions into a single creation. Endlessly working on a lot of designs, Joel Escalona is continuously looking for more projects. And, as he indicates on his website, ‘if you own a very cool company and you are interested in producing or selling one of my designs you may just drop me a note to know more about my work.' - simple !
To see more from Joel Escalona go to http://www.joelescalona.com
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