Adrian Balcau is a young designer from Cluj. At only 25 years old, he is already a regular at object design exhibitions and can be found at all the trade fairs in the field, always with something surprising.
About design in Romania, about materials, about his collections and furnishing tips for us, we leave you to find out directly from him in an interview given to the povesteacasei.ro editorial team, not before inviting you to admire his work in the gallery above.
Tell us a few words about yourself. If we read your CV, what would impress us?
Oh, I don't like to brag. Maybe the fact that just last year I graduated and for a recent graduate I feel like I've managed to do quite a lot in a year, including succeeding in making my presence felt on the Romanian design market in such a short time.
You are a designer in Romania. Tell us an advantage and a disadvantage of this fact in your profession.
In Romania, the Romanian design market is still developing, and this is a disadvantage for obvious reasons. The vast majority of people still don't have a taste for design objects, they are not yet very aware of the alternative of designer made products when it comes to interior design, there aren't many specialized stores and so on.
But the good part is that all these things are also a great advantage. Everything is a blank slate for designers in Romania, everything is fresh and ready to be conquered. Although still growing, there is already a certain audience that is starting to become interested in design and it remains up to us to grow the appetite of as many people as possible.
Not to mention the fact that the identity of Romanian design is still waiting to be outlined by young designers. And this is something that excites me very much.
You live in Cluj. Would you ever leave it?
I don't know, for a long time I wanted to leave, but I came to believe that it would have been "the easy way out". In a conversation with someone about the same thing, I said that I could leave somewhere where there would be more room for design and creative industries OR I could stay and contribute to making Cluj a happening, interesting and creative place where others would want to move.
And with everything that's already happening in art and fashion in Cluj, I believe it wouldn't be an impossible thing at all. I really like it here. That's why I also created the C LO pillow collection.
What are your favorite materials? What type of material could you never exclude from the world of object design?
The materials I work with depend on the object being created and the shape I want to achieve. I have worked a lot with plastics for lighting fixtures because I needed flexibility, linearity and accessibility. However, a material that I would like to work with more and that I could never exclude from the world of object design is wood.
