Interview W/Nila Rezaei from RK COLLECTIVE
How is what you designed for SIT related to your practice?
Alex and Zaal had seen Crafted Liberation and felt an immediate connection to what SIT was trying to be, a space that holds cultural memory, that doesn't ask you to leave your history at the door.
The challenge was translating that methodology to a new context, with new materials and a different site. We couldn't just replicate the stadium seats. We needed to design something that belonged specifically to SIT, objects that spoke to this space, these fabrics, this community.
So we worked with the textiles Baba's already had; the heirloom passed down from the previous generation, the lace doilies, the tablecloths, the things that already carried their story. We adapted the chair design for a café context: functional, durable, and made to be sat in daily. Then, in collaboration with DEFY Design and with chair frames generously donated by Cultivated — the circular arm of Cult Furniture — we applied the same methodology we developed through Crafted Liberation: seat panels made from 100% textile waste and plastic waste, pressed together until the fibres become permanently part of the material itself. You can't peel them off. They're not a decoration. They are structurally part of the object.
This is a new iteration of our Material Storytelling framework; the practice of embedding narrative directly into functional daily objects as part of our civic spaces. When design carries a story in its material, it doesn't need a wall label. The object speaks, and is cared for longer. It resists conformity!
What impact can good design have on the world?
Victor Papanek, one of the most important design thinkers of the 20th century , argued that design is the most powerful tool humans have for shaping the world around them, and therefore carries an enormous ethical responsibility. He said almost all design as it was practiced served the wealthy, the able-bodied, and the already comfortable. That was fifty years ago. Not much has changed.
Around 80% of a product's environmental footprint is determined at the design stage, before a single thing is made. The same logic applies socially. When you design a space, a product, a system, you are making assumptions about who it's for. The Eurocentric idea of design, optimised for individual comfort, individual ownership, individual convenience, is baked into most of what gets made.
But there are other ways. Many cultures have always understood design as something collective, something that serves the common table. The furniture at SIT exists inside that tradition. It's not designed for one person. It's designed for gathering.
And I'd add one more thing: every object tells a story. No product is passive. The shape of a chair carries ideology. The material carries history and politics. The question is whether that story is intentional, or invisible.
Lastly, what does the act of sitting mean to you?
In Persian culture, we have the Korsi, a low table with a heater underneath, covered in a heavy blanket. In winter, the whole family gathers around it, they SIT with feet tucked under the warmth, for hours. You don't sit at a Korsi to eat quickly and leave. You sit to stay. To listen to your grandmother's stories. To argue. To fall asleep. To exist together.
I grew up carrying that image of sitting as something communal, almost sacred , a gesture that says: I'm not going anywhere. I'm here with you.
And then I think about Crafted Liberation. The headscarves we collected came from women across the world, many of them from Iran, where the act of removing a headscarf in public is an act of protest, of reclaiming bodily autonomy, of saying I will not disappear. We transformed those scarves into seats. A place to sit. To be seen. To take up space.
That's what sitting means to me, the act of being present, on your own terms, in the company of others.
Crafted Liberation invites everyone, the public and the design community alike; to sit with the story. Both figuratively and literally.
Instagram: @crafted_liberation, @nila.rezaei
