“We did as we were told,”
Birsel says. “We met, we started working together, we fell in love.” Seck moved
from Paris to New York City, where the two became partners “in life and in
work.” Together they formed their design and innovation studio, Birsel + Seck,
swiftly developed a robust client roster, and had their “best product”—their
kids.
The Birsel + Seck resume
boasts the likes of Amazon, GE, Herman Miller, Staples, and Toyota, and
includes social design work to bring the economic value of design to Senegal
and other parts of Africa. Despite the diversity of their portfolio, Birsel
points out that, “The end user is always at the center of our thinking.” The
pair uses their proprietary creative process, Deconstruction:Reconstruction, or
DE:RE, to co-design with their clients to “break preconceptions, shift the
point of view, and solve to create new value within existing constraints.”
As partners, the New
York-based duo typically collaborate on the ideation phase with the more
logical Birsel tethering the dream-prone Seck, who teases that he will “make a
flying chair if left alone.” That said, while Birsel takes a stronger hand in
conceptual development, she says, “Bibi has a true expertise in how things are
made and will see designs through to engineering, development, and production.”
Such was the case on their latest project for Herman Miller, Overlay, a system
of freestanding, movable walls designed to transform the open office.
That project was inspired
by a string of dichotomies—messy and clean, alone yet together, simple but
flexible—fitting, as resolving dichotomies shapes the duo’s point of view, both
in design and life. Seck’s Senegalese background and Birsel’s Turkish
upbringing make them feel like both insiders and outsiders whose design DNA is
defined by finding the sweet spot in between. It’s also made them a perfect fit
for Herman Miller. “Herman Miller’s use of external design studios leads to
different cultures and perspectives coming together, which really goes
hand-in-hand with our experience,” Birsel says.
Office/Studio
Birsel + Seck |
New York, New York
Design the Long Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship Hardcover – December 6, 2022
[1] Ayse Birsel was born
in Turkey, a land of contrasts. Birsel and her designs are combinations of
contrasting points of view. Like her homeland, where thoroughly modern ideas
and practices exist side-by-side with centuries-old structures and customs,
Birsel’s designs make everything work. Born in the port city of Izmir, the Turkish
name for Smyrna, a town more than 2,000 years old, Birsel absorbed a
Mediterranean cosmopolitanism.
She studied industrial
design at Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara, the capital of Turkey,
from 1981 to 1985. A Fulbright scholarship brought her to the Pratt Institute
in New York for work on her Masters [Master’s] degree. At Pratt, Ayse
especially remembers Bruce Hannah, Rowena Reed, and Peter Barna, from whom she
learned a “no-nonsense” view of design—as Ayse says, a way of “distilling problems,
solutions, and forms to their essence.” This became her design
perspective—distilling problems to reveal novel answers.
With charming bluntness,
Ayse tells people that “being an outsider” is a big help.
“Because I’m curious of
so many things, I find it easy to collaborate with people who can teach me,”
she says. Her openness to new ideas comes in handy in the world of design. She
thinks designers benefit from being apart, from being able to observe from the
outside without prejudice.
Such a perspective leads
her to enjoy working with organizations that embrace change. “I’m not very good
at giving new form to old answers.” Design for Ayse is a selfish process. She
designs because she likes to. Though innovation is often the result of her
work, it is never the goal. “Too much emphasis on innovation produces too much
junk,” she says. So Ayse is always asking “Why?” and “Why not?” Collaboration
leads to synthesis.
Her thesis at Pratt, “The
Water Room,” won an ID Award for Concepts and the Design of the Future
competition in Japan. She then designed a collection of office accessories with
Bruce Hannah. In 1995, she designed a combination bidet and toilet for Japanese
manufacturer Toto. In June 1997, she began work on the Resolve office system.
Later, Birsel’s design with husband Bibi Seck—Teneo Storage Furniture—achieved
widespread acclaim. Her next collaboration with Seck for Herman Miller,
Overlay, is a system of freestanding, movable walls designed to transform the
open office.
Birsel is also the creator of
Design the Life You Love—a book, online course, in-person workshop, and
podcast—that teaches non-designers how to create a meaningful life. “Our lives
are our biggest design projects,” she says. “What fascinates me is to solve
problems and try to make people’s lives better, whether it’s through products
or simply through the process of design.”
Seck joined French automobile
company Renault after
graduating from the Ecole Supérieure du Design Industriel in 1990 with a
Master’s degree in industrial design. Whilst at Renault, where he was lead
designer for 12 years, Seck led the interior design teams for a number of
vehicles including the Scenic I and Trafic models, which were both named the
car of the year by the European trade press.
In 2003 Seck moved to New York,
where he set up design studio Birsel + Seck with partner Ayse Birsel in 2014.
There he uses his background leading automotive design to see projects
through from the development stages to engineering and prototyping. The product
design studio has won multiple awards and worked with global clients including
Target, Herman Miller and Office Max.
Seck hopes to promote design within
West Africa and has collaborated with IKEA to create an African
design collection. He designed a collection titled M’Afrique for Italian
brand Moroso, alongside partner Birsel and in close collaboration with local
craftspeople in Dakar.
The designer also frequently talks
at worldwide events including the Dakar Biennale of Art and Design and the
Indaba Design Conference. Seck has taught at universities including the Pratt
Institute, Université Technologique de Compiegne and Strate Collége School
of Design and Management.
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