Alexandra Gerber

The Crit

Industrial designer Alexandra Gerber joins the podcast to discuss her approach to design as a form of cultural expression and technical cros

Key takeaways

• Alexandra utilizes extrusion technology from the glazing industry to create the modular 'Up Shelf' system.
• She emphasizes that understanding how an object is made empowers consumers and promotes repairability.

Main topics

• Design as cultural expression
• Cross-industry technology transfer

Notable quotes

If we were never to make anything new, we could never evolve.

Conclusion

The episode offers a profound look at the intersection of engineering

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:16) Hello and welcome to The Crit, the podcast that lets designers review themselves. My name is Olly Stratford and each fortnight I invite someone into the studio to reveal what they really think about their career to date. Today's guest is Alexandra Gerber, an industrial designer trained at Lausanne's prestigious Eccles School and established in her own eponymous studio in London since 2017. Prior to forming her studio, which has designed products, lighting, furniture and spaces for clients including Nine, SCP and Isocon, Alexandra cut her teeth in the studios of Nitz & Cohen and Tom Dixon, working across typologies. In a recent interview with Design Gallery at Unit D, for whom Alexandra staged an exhibition in June 2026, she was asked about whether the world needs new things, a criticism often levelled at the design field and its use of resources and connections to consumerism. If we were never to make anything new, we could never evolve, Alexandra responded. In the same way, whatever we're doing is a reflection of us as humans, but we can think more about how and why you make them, that's for sure. Alexandra, welcome to The Crit. Thank you. I guess implicit in that quote, it's this idea of designers making functional objects sometimes, Speaker 2 (1:30) but Speaker 1 (1:31) it's also an expression of culture in the way in which sort of literature can be or art or anything like that. Do you think as a field we think about that side enough? There's often this idea we're creating like objects for use or for purchase or for sale. Do you think we think about that cultural? dimension as much as we should do. Speaker 2 (1:52) I don't think we're aware of it as much maybe, but if you will go to a museum like the V &A or something and you can go back and see how we evolved, how the objects evolved around us, then you will see that this is really like a clear thing that sort of changes with us and I think that's really nice. Speaker 1 (2:11) Is that something you do? Are you interested in the history of objects? Do you find that useful research for your practice? Speaker 2 (2:18) I am very often researching on Speaker 1 (2:21) auction houses. Oh, Speaker 2 (2:24) really? Yeah, yeah. I mean, not like conscious research, but I do, like last night I spent a lot of time on it. Just because I just think it's really interesting to like look back on how... like how are objects made, there's always something that is quite refreshing to go back a little bit. But I do loops, I also don't think we're so linear, we go back and then go forward like this, into a sort of oval Speaker 1 (2:50) -shaped loop. Are you ever buying things from the auction houses? Speaker 2 (2:53) I do when I have money. Not Speaker 1 (2:56) very often, Speaker 2 (2:57) I tell you. Rarely. No, but it does happen. And if you go on the Swedish ones or something, then there is some cheap deals to be done. There's a few good ones. Speaker 1 (3:08) Is this like furniture, lighting, objects? Speaker 2 (3:10) Yeah, furniture, lighting. But I didn't buy many secondhand lighting, but I have a few furniture, definitely. Speaker 1 (3:18) Are you a collector at all? Because some designers would also say, like, I am a collector of objects. I love the kind of tactility of them. I love having them. Do you have that? Is there anything you collect? Speaker 2 (3:29) Not something specific, I must say, but I do like the idea of collecting things. Again, you need to have a bit of... I like the idea of going to car boot sales and all of this kind of stuff. I like to do that. I like to treasure hunt a little bit to find something good. My grandmother was a big collector, so she was really good at finding things. And I think, yeah, Speaker 1 (3:51) this love of slightly Speaker 2 (3:52) ancient... or like not ancient but like slightly like i think back in the days people used to make things so much better so like i think a little bit you get this thing oh this craft aspects to how things were made that is fascinating today i think to look at and yeah oh wow this is so well made yeah things often Speaker 1 (4:15) built to last longer i suppose today you know that some consumer forces that don't want things to last too long, they'd like you to replace them. Yeah, buy it again, or Speaker 2 (4:24) brands that don't want to like do things like that anymore. Because Yeah. But yeah, so yeah, I am I do look at these kind of things. And I am really interested in in how, how we are connected in time with the objects. And and I do that a lot with my work as well. Well, sort of look at what sort of the latest technology not like technologies that are like, I don't know, like AI and all of that. Microchips. Speaker 1 (4:52) Yeah, exactly. Not this Speaker 2 (4:53) kind of technology, but just more manufacturing, like advancement in, that are probably smaller advancements, but that are interesting for new applications. I Speaker 1 (5:03) think one thing that's quite distinctive of you is you... is that exact process you've described. You look at like other industries and processes they're using and then see if they could be transported across, right? Like I think you did window technology once, right? Yeah, Speaker 2 (5:19) I did that for my upshelf, which was I visited an extrusion factory back in the days when I was at Tom Dixon for the IKEA project. And there they had these extrusions that were very complex extrusions for windows that were connected by a little polyamide sort of spacer. And this is used for stopping the connection between the metal outside and the metal inside to prevent the heat or the cold to come in. But the connection itself was very beautiful and very strong and I then transferred this connection when I did the up shelf to connect two extrusions that were a bit awkward to connect otherwise. Speaker 1 (6:02) What do you kind of look for and like in an object? Because the objects you create I think are always very elegant and very beautiful. Thank you. You're welcome. But you also have a kind of love of ingenuity, right? And a sort of cleverness of... And you've talked in the past about you grew up in agriculture as well. Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:21) And Speaker 1 (6:22) like that kind of slightly more, you know, I suppose like homemade solutions and things. Speaker 2 (6:27) Yeah, I'm definitely interested in like clever solutions that are very straightforward as well. If you look at tools, which is sort of what you would have. around in agriculture, tractors, all of this. It's much more crude, it's cruder the way the solution is than sort of welded, but the solutions are really straightforward and smart. And so, yeah, I would definitely look into this kind of... I like it when an object exposes also how it works. And I think that's more true of tools than it is of furniture or how it's made. It's much more visible. It's sort of... and that means that you can understand how it's made and then you can connect to the object, which I think is really important. Speaker 1 (7:11) Why do you think it is important? Because, you know, I get what designers like to know, right? And people do talk about this, it's like more truthful, it's more honest, but like, you know, for some people, they may be like, I don't care. I don't need to know. Yeah, I Speaker 2 (7:24) guess it's personal taste. But I think like, I do think that it's, that is really nice, if you can understand how something is made, it's got several good points. One is that it means it's repairable often. Yeah. There's that aspect. And then if you can repair something, you can learn how to repair it. That means you can really connect to an object. And it's empowering you as a consumer as well. If you can repair something, then you own it differently. You know what I mean? And the day you have repaired it, then there is a whole story around it. I don't know. I think there's something really nice about this. Speaker 2 (8:04) this connection and to understand how something is made is Speaker 2 (8:09) I don't know, it's empowering. I feel like it just gives you something more. And it can also, there is that aspect, some objects show how they're made, but other objects also show the thinking. So the connection of two ideas or two things together, that kind of come together, I think it's really nice when you can understand that. And I feel objects are often... or in my world, connection of several things together and that becomes something new. I Speaker 1 (8:41) think you're right. There is this idea of, you know, if we talk about objects as culture and embedding that, there are certain values that some objects express. You know, if you see something like an iPhone, it's completely sealed, it's kind of perfect. It's not telling you, Speaker 2 (8:56) you can Speaker 1 (8:56) take it apart or repair it or adapt it. Whereas there are other like... know tech things where maybe the way they're built you can see a little bit more there's Speaker 2 (9:05) like Speaker 1 (9:05) visible screws you could undo and go in there that's kind of saying to someone you have a right to repair me like you can mess around with me that's okay Speaker 2 (9:13) it's very inviting i think it's a very different mentality yeah and i like that but i mean of course it depends i'm not saying if like a there's a perfect sofa that has no visible nothing that it's a bad sofa it just depends what it is but yeah Speaker 1 (9:30) Alexandra, let's move to your crit proper. So your first question, what's your best design? What would you like to put forward for this? Speaker 2 (9:37) But we just talked about it. But like, I think the up shelf is one of the objects of value the most in what I've done, because Speaker 2 (9:49) because I like how it looks in the end. I've been living with a few of them at home and I feel it's still valid. It works. It looks good. And also because I like the thinking behind it and it's very efficiently made. Speaker 1 (10:09) Yeah, maybe explain the making because I suppose for someone who doesn't know this, you know, they know it's shelving, but what's special about the upshelf? Speaker 2 (10:16) So the shelf is made... So it's made of one extrusion that is 150 wide, but that is then mirrored and connected by this connection that is specific to mirror or glazing frames. And this same part is then used for the shelves themselves, but also for the sides. And when the connection is made, there is a groove that is formed that allows for a connector to be placed inside. And the shelf itself as a functionality has the specifics of being, you can place the shelf at whatever level you want. You can just slide it down the groove. And that means that also if you ever have a book or something that is suddenly too big to fit in, you can just unscrew it, lift it up a bit, close it again. And with keeping the books on, it's a bit heavy, but you can do it. and it just adds this little extra functionality of actually you can really fine-tune where your shelvings are. And it's just loads of little improvements but so in terms of manufacturing it's quite clever because it's one actually fairly small extrusion that