What is your background and how does it inform your designs?
After passing the Swiss Maturité fédérale in Economics, I started higher studies in Engineering, then Material Science, but while both of these have become a solid base for my work, I felt that something was missing. That was when I decided to study Business, which is a good structure for any career and informs all the budgetary decisions and constraints that are within each project. In 2000, I met an Industrial Designer and discovered that everything that I was naturally gifted at and interested in existed in that profession! I immediately applied to various programs, and was accepted by all, but beyond its reputation, the Cleveland Institute of Art offered a longer and more thorough foundation program, and that is why I chose it. There, I learned both the scientific and artistic components of design. Contemporaneously, I was restoring the old house I was living in, which gave me hands-on experience as I installed new plumbing, air conditioning, lighting, etc. myself. For example, I rebuilt the kitchen and bathroom from the subfloor up. The fact that I have lived and worked in several countries, learned their construction methods and languages is an absolute bonus. All of the above contribute into a very broad approach to my designs. 

What do you mean by that?  
For each design, I think about how it will be constructed, cleaned, repaired, recycled, all within the budgetary constraints... but also, I take into account how it will be used, whether it is ergonomic, sustainable, space-optimised, and I finish with aesthetics, once all the other boxes have been ticked.

About aesthetics, what is your style?
I don't have a specific style that my work is recognisable by, or rather I don't impose my style on my clients. My view is that they are the ones who will interact with that design every day, so it needs to represent and optimise their life, their taste, their purpose, their use. Thus, for every project, I make sure to understand who they are, what they look for and need, in order to emulate them, their brand, or their customers' preferences through my designs.

You mentioned recycling, is sustainability important to you?
As a teenager, I was fortunate enough to get a tour of a self-sustaining eco-system in the New Mexico desert, and it impacted me profoundly: every design of mine includes a sustainable dimension. However, I am aware that for sustainable designs to be and remain part of my clients' lives, all their needs and wishes have to be fulfilled first and foremost. Thus, in the last few years, I have begun to do public speaking in order to raise awareness about true sustainability and how it can be incorporated into our lives without too much compromise. While this is a universal issue, our job as designers is to present the market with designs that are sustainable. This is also part of my design consulting, as I want to offer choices to my clients for sustainable material sourcing, construction methods, and designs. That implies also raising awareness with the manufacturers and craftspeople, and of course we want the clients to appreciate that dimension of what will become their every day environment: in order to have a real, lasting impact, you need to address every participant within the life cycle.

What do you design?
That is also broad... After my studies, about twenty years ago, I started a new division for a 5th avenue company in New York, designing furniture that had to be space optimised, and I also looked for timeless designs that just made sense without following trends. It seems that I succeeded, since many of my designs are still being sold today throughout the United States. A few years later, I was invited to visit a yacht design company and its shipyard. Unbeknownst to me, they were looking for a designer, and the owner offered me a job on the spot, precisely because he liked my designs and engineering/business/material science understanding but also the fact that I had no background or previous interest in that field! Our offices were right next to the shipyard, so I learned the industry very fast thanks to daily interactions with the workers and engineers. The owner had bet on the fact that I wouldn't be limited by the "we've always done it this way" frame of mind, and he was right: we won "Most Innovative Yacht" and “Best Interior Layout” at the Cannes Boat Show two years later. That was when I realized that my wide experience was absolutely a strength. While I was still working with them, I was asked to optimize the layout of a luxury residence in my home country of Switzerland, and was offered a job by one of our vendors during that project to design luxury residences. This coincided with the market crash that impacted the yacht industry and I decided to move to Zürich and work with that company for a few years.
Finally, in 2016, I created my own design consulting company in Switzerland, Aldesso AG, and have worked on diverse projects since. For now, I have extensive experience designing furniture, spaces, yachts. I am not limited by a specific industry. On the contrary, I have found that each of my experiences has enriched the others… so who knows what the future holds?

Finally, what type of project are you looking for?
I like the challenge of ensuring that the many dimensions I am working on are all addressed. This is what we call an "elegant solution" - often what seems most obvious or simple from the outside might have required the most work. Making the complex simple is where I thrive!