Day #10 | The charmer is alive!

Hadeel
Jun 8, 2017
4 min read

Hello! today was an interesting day.

I arrived at the office and started the day by fixing the drawings Sven had asked me to make. Leen on the other hand, had not shown up and I started to get worried because she is never late and We had a meeting at 11 am with Dorian Pauwels (one of the partners who owns ikon house). At 10:30 am Leen arrived with the funniest story. She had overslept as her phone was set to the Beirut timing, which happens to be one hour later than Dubai. When Sven texted her to check where she was, she wondered why he was even asking if she was coming in or not because her phone still said 9 am! Haha.. check your settings Leen!

We took off to go to Ikon house which literally lies in the alley next to SVEN|M, but we went around in a big circle to come back to the same spot and realized it was right there. Smooth.

When we walked into the store we were warmly greeted by the lady at the front desk, who asked us to wait for Dorian. We had previously met him during our visit on the Late AlSerkal night, and Sonia arranged for us to reconnect with him to learn more and for an interview that could be featured in our blog.

Dorian came down and he gave us a tour of the space, explaining all the cool features regarding how the electricity and switches work and how that is the core of their business.

Ikon house, as he explained, brings together furniture and technology, so that they both work together to make a space more comfortable for the user and more functional. He explained their home automation system to us, telling us that in a normal electrical set up, the switches are connected to a circuit that opens and closes and provides electricity to a home; however, their kind of circuit operates via a computer, so that the switches can be programmed to do a variety of actions, like switch on and off at certain times and on certain days. This entire setup is connected to a website and all the commands are encrypted. Cool ha?!

We then walked into the home theater that is set up in the store. A big comfortable sofa, a big screen, a sound system and elegant design chairs in addition to the other elements enriching the atmosphere of the space. In there he talked about his own background how Ikon house came to be. As a furniture lover and collector, he started up the small business at his own apartment in Marina, back then when he was a management consultant. Then a friend of his, who was a technician teamed up with him to create what is now Ikon house; a melange of furniture and tech. They started in 2007 and there it is, the dream of his own business came true.

I asked him about how he decides on what gets displayed in the store, and his answer was, "Well it's not the best criteria but I display pieces based on my taste!" We also asked him about his favorite designer and his answer was Paul Kjaerholm for his particularly simplistic and articulate PK 25 chair. The chair, as he says was made when the majority of industrial furniture was produced in wood, and what Paul did was use steel and folded it in different directions to create an arm rest, seat structure and legs with a smoothly polished surface balancing the amount of carbon and nickel in the steel to insure a smooth and clean surface.

Leen then asked,"Would you consider manufacturing your own pieces ? To which replied that this is not a step forward for him as it is a voluminous market and he would need to have certain advantages.

At the end we shared with Dorian the pictures of our miniature chairs which we created at college last semester, which he loved! and we thanked him for the thoughtful and well explained details of how Ikon house became what it is today.

The day continued from there back at the office but the fun was not over! Towards the end of the day, Sven asked Leen and I to accompany him to the metal shop to see how the charmer was turning out to be! The results were amazing and the charmer was alive! A few more steps like polishing it and trimming the edges as well as putting the final finishes on the metal and we are done! Our prototype was there and it was beautiful.

The charmer prototype (photo credit: Sven)