International achievements of Iranian designers
Many people believe that Iran is far behind European countries in terms of design and production quality and when it comes to quality goods with a special and beautiful design, everyone is looking for a foreign product. Now, if we take a closer look around us, we will realize that there are designers and producers in Iran who, with effort and hard work, present creativity to their clients with the best quality. And it becomes more interesting when we learn that the same designers and domestic manufacturers win medals and rankings in European and global competitions.
Although creativity and quality of this group is not yet widely seen in society, gradually we can see that many designers and mass builders, trust this trend and use it extensively in their work. This flow could be a bright start for a new era in domestic production. As a result of observing the growth of domestic goods, we met Siavash Soofinejad, who pursues this path professionally with motivation and perseverance and has gained a brilliant record in this field.
Siavash Soofinejad has been active since 2009 as a designer and producer of furniture and lighting objects, combining the traditional art of Iranian architecture with modern art. And it has been a while that he is designing and producing decorative objects with his personal brand "Villasufia".
(https://instagram.com/villasufia?igshid=t9oy3x59scxy)
Siavash Soofinejad was born in 1978 in Tehran. Having graduated from the National Talent Development Organization (SAMPAD), he entered the Faculty of Civil Engineering of Tehran Azad University in 1996, and then in 2001, continued his studies in the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Azad University of Tehran, majoring in architecture. He holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in Art Philosophy from Malaysia. His academic career started in 2006 when he established the Department of Interior Design and Architecture at a private College. He has been an architecture-and-interior-design expert presenter in various television and radio programs. Translating articles, compiling books in the field of decoration, and publishing them in interior design magazines, such as "Home and Office" and "Sustainable Architecture", are his other activities. In recent years, he has been the secretary of the interior design department of a specialized quarterly magazine, called “Villa architecture”, and also the author of “ZH” magazine, and his personal column has been active in “Asia” newspaper, known as “Mr. Design”.
Siavash Soofinejad continues his journalistic activities as a producer, making documentaries from interviewing Iranian designers, artists, and architects, with the aim of introducing and supporting Iranian art, creativity, and culture.
His statement about his motivation and goals is: “Our goal and desire is to participate in world-renowned exhibitions as an Iranian luxury brand instead of being a visitor. And with this hope, we strive in our field of production, which is the production and design of furniture and lighting objects. Our most important challenge is convincing the Iranian clients to accept our own design instead of specific European brands. Now, due to the conditions of the embargo on foreign goods, this situation can be used more, to gradually prove the quality of domestically produced goods to our clients and domestic consumers. However, we are still at the beginning of the road because the government has been late in coming to terms with filling the oil sales deficit with domestic production. Of course, if these sanctions did not happen, probably no one would have thought about it for another 40 years, and now we are almost forced to make this happen. With all these delays, we try to improve our production quality step by step. In our way forward, we will work with more faith and effort until the day when we can introduce Iran in the world with the art of the new generation and its culture and background both.”
This object has been designed by the team collaboration of Siavash Soofinejad and Nima Bavardi and produced with the sponsorship of Villasufia brand and won an award from the European product design competition.
Nima Bavardi, a great Iranian designer who has won the top titles in many international competitions so far, this time with the cooperation of Siavash Soofinejad has won two awards at the same time in the European Product Design Award competition. Last year, the team of Nima Bavardi and Siavash Sufinejad won the gold and bronze medals of the 2019 European Product Design Competition.
Nima Bavardi is a graduate of Industrial Design at the Azad Universities of Tabriz and Tehran, who won only 11 awards from A’Design Award between 2016 and 2018. Receiving these titles, in addition to other competition awards, as well as being part of the international design competitions juries, has caused the World Design Consortium to place his name among the top 100 designers in the world.