With innovation his watchword, Polish designer Oskar Zięta takes the road less-travelled.

Oskar Zięta in his workshop: the designer combines cutting edge methods with idiosyncratic forms

Pole Apart: Oskar Zięta | Novedades

Oskar Zięta in his workshop: the designer combines cutting edge methods with idiosyncratic forms

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Making furniture by welding together sheets of steel and blowing them up sounds like an unlikely production process. Then again, it is also the reason Oskar Zięta is one of most celebrated, and certainly one of the most idiosyncratic, Polish designers working today.

Born in 1976 in Łódź, Zięta studied architecture in Szczecin before becoming a researcher at the department of Computer Aided Architectural Design at ETH Zürich in 2003. The collaborative, process-oriented nature of the institution influenced him significantly and he quickly developed a novel method of creating objects from steel, called "free inner pressure forming". Realising the technique's potential, Zięta created his first stool, Plopp, in 2007.

The Plopp stool comes in a variety of sizes and finishes: from stepping stools to bar stools and in 9 colour variations

Pole Apart: Oskar Zięta | Novedades

The Plopp stool comes in a variety of sizes and finishes: from stepping stools to bar stools and in 9 colour variations

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Plopp's appeal – whimsical, sturdy, mass-produced and each one uniquely undulating – was universal. Over time, it found its way into the permanent collections of Paris’s Centre Pompidou, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, and the Zurich Design Museum. In 2006, Zięta opened his own factory at home in Poland, and began producing chairs, hooks, trestles, mirrors and ladders using the same process. To much acclaim, in 2014 he was asked to create a temporary installation in the courtyard of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, made up of shallow, overlapping arches, created using the designer's signature method.

As well as expanding a range of products using free inner pressure tube forming, Zięta also experiments with new materials and processes, for instance perforated aluminium for the 3+ collection

Pole Apart: Oskar Zięta | Novedades

As well as expanding a range of products using free inner pressure tube forming, Zięta also experiments with new materials and processes, for instance perforated aluminium for the 3+ collection

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Despite having found success, Zięta is still innovating. His latest forays into experimental products include the 2013 3+, a collection of furniture constructed from perforated aluminium plates, and Pakiet, a flatpack line with a twist launched in 2016, in which disparate plywood elements are clipped together using metal brackets. Both show the designer's ingenuity in working with different materials, and his ability to surprise and delight in equal measure.

Zięta’s latest range, Pakiet, is a set of versatile flatpack products which consist of plywood segments held together by metal clips

Pole Apart: Oskar Zięta | Novedades

Zięta’s latest range, Pakiet, is a set of versatile flatpack products which consist of plywood segments held together by metal clips

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