Yusuf and Kuldeep have a long history of working together on design assignments. It started at NID and they worked closely together on seating systems for the Indian Railways during their final NID Diploma project at Harita Grammar in Hosur. They had kept knocking into Hridish at various companies intermittently.
“When I was working with Dovetail facility I met Hidish where he was using their factory facilities to build his prototypes for his final year design project. Yusuf was called on to be his external Jury member for his final assessment at Shrishti. Coincidentally, Yusuf was also at the Dovetail factory where he was working on a project to develop children’s furniture.
That’s when we got talking over cups of chai and saw a potential chemistry between the 3 of us. Without much ado, we sealed our fates together and decided to make the plunge”.
__ Kuldeep 
Over the period of 5 years since establishment, the motivation and drive to innovate and create furniture continues to be driven by a passion that starts with identification of each individual client needs that is addressed and has resulted into a tailor made solution with great care and concern for detailing and originality of idea. In their view while designing an ‘ideal’ piece of furniture the attempt is always to embody a ‘soul and a purpose for its existence’ – a quality they strive for, in addition to embedding within itself key factors like, comfort to sit on, economy of material, strength and durability, light weight and minimal. Their attempt is always to give the end user a furniture experience that is beyond need or want.
One of the key features their design studio seeks is the excitement of making it. There is creative play in the geometry and structure of their solutions making their furniture strong, meaningful, interesting, minimal and good looking. There is an uncompromising attitude to refine the joinery details and this is reflected the way a furniture piece looks eventually.
An example is the hardwood kitchen cabinets that use no nails in its construction. The geometry and joinery is refined to such an extent that the whole unit assembly just inter-locks into place with wooden dowels and adhesive.
“Whoever said pleasure wasn’t functional?”
- Charles Eames response when asked whether he designed for pleasure or function.
The team believes that aesthetics (form) and function are intrinsically correlated. Form arises out of function. When a piece of furniture performs well in all its aspects, it emanates beauty.
Nature’s remarkable creations never fail to fill them with awe. They draw inspiration studying the phenomenal body of work done by ‘International Masters’ - furniture designers like George Nakashima, Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl, Charles Eames, to name a few. The simplicity of form and function developed by the ‘Shaker’ community in their soulfully made furniture drives their search for new ideas.
At present Bent by design is in the process of setting up and ramping up their workshop space to be able to make furniture in a planned manner that is process driven so as to cut down on delivery time. One can buy their furniture collection at 'The Paper-boat Collective' store in Goa. They are in talks with other leading stores in Bengaluru and other cities to place our furniture.
