Ctrlzak
"We always try to make projects that make people think."
About Ctrlzak
CTRLZAK is a hybrid studio that integrates different disciplines and cultures. The founders, Katia Meneghini and Thanos Zakopoulos, are both artists and designers in their own right. The Italian-Greek duo’s creations are inspired by their travels and experiences around the world and by their own rich cultural backgrounds. The studio creates artworks, objects and spaces but– above all– situations where people can come together in order to make what really matters: human relations.
CTRLZAK’s projects and extensive research into tradition and cultural context create a new hybrid future by learning from the past. Each project is a story waiting to be told, with a multitude of forms and endings. Each one experiments with diverse methods of narration where irony and symbolism go beyond aesthetics and functionality, in order to activate mechanisms of reflection
Interview with Ctrlzak
How did your environment inspire you to come up with your product for our collection?
Everything around us is a source of inspiration and especially the things that many people do not see discarding them as mundane. Travelling is also a very large part of our inspiration pool. Coming into contact with new cultures and diverse environments is fundamental we believe for ones’ cultural and overall education. Through our travels we have come into contact with many different realities and this has become the basis for many projects we have developed. Realities as well that go beyond anthropocentric activities and concern the natural world that surrounds us. In fact every single experience within nature is the biggest inspiration one can have and that’s the basis behind the projects we have developed for this collection.
Why is sustainability important to you?
In each project we take into consideration many different aspects from functionality to aesthetics and sustainability to semiotics. Of course depending on the nature of the project the attention towards one or another changes even though all of them co-exist and work in unison. For us it is important above all to have an open mind free of preconditions and stereotypes, creating work which is founded on meticulous research and reflection. Sustainability is embedded within each project that we make by default, it is an intrinsic property of creation even though it can take many forms. We believe that without sustainability in one way or another a novel project nowadays has no reason of existence.
How do you integrate thoughts about sustainability into your creation process?
There are many ways that a design can be sustainable and it depends again on the case. For our part what we try to do with our projects is create awareness. Regardless the nature of the project we try to make people understand the reasons behind it and create an awareness that can bring them to a more sustainable way of life.
