Just two years old, the Brooklyn-based manufacturer Souda is already producing a range of innovative and unusual products. Back at ICFF for a second year — in 2014 they took home the "Best New Designer" award — the company debuted a minimal folding chair by Calen Knauf and Conrad Brown, and a second typology of their Kreten series. Made by casting concrete into a spandex mold capped with a plexiglass plate, Kreten side tables have a sculptural quality and a smooth, glassy top surface. Each shape is unique and infused with personality — the tables seem to bend, shift, and communicate when paired in small groups. They're available in short or tall sizes (short is a new addition this year), and Souda also has a Kreten Candelabra. Produced in red, mustard, and neutrals, the candlestick-holder seems equal parts undersea coral and arterial branch.
"The idea at its foundation was about the fluidity of concrete," says designer and cofounder Isaac Friedman-Heiman, when asked about Kreten's origins. "It's traditionally a very rectilinear material, very brutalist. We wanted to try and capture that fluid nature." Currently produced in small to medium batches, Souda is looking to manufacture the tables in larger quantities due to increased demand, and the "messy business" of concrete production at scale. They've recently started experimenting with custom shapes for select projects — designer Isabel Marant used several in a recent runway show — and speciality colorways for orders of 25 or more.
Fittingly, Friedman-Heiman explained that Souda is "like a revelation," translating loosely from the Japanese as "Oh yeah!"
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