"We are very happy here," the co-founders of PUNKT Maria Paunova and Ivaylo Mitev tell us. The two have been transforming various materials into functional interior objects for twelve years now through the so-called process of upcycling old, broken or unusable furniture. This concept is a way of limiting consumerism and the rapid replacement of the old with the new.
They spend most of their time at their workshop. For the past four years, it has been located on the site of a former cafeteria for a nearby electric car and battery factory, one of many places near Totleben Blvd. that look semi-abandoned, but are in fact buzzing with life – there are several other studios nearby, as well as countless music rehearsal spaces.
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
The studio consists of two rooms; one is a warehouse for their products ("they don't stay there long"), and the other is where the actual work takes place.
On a rainy and gloomy day like the one of my visit, the atmosphere in the space resembles a difficult Tarkovsky film and is somehow at odds with both the positivism of Maria and Ivaylo and the clean lines of their designs.
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
“We have pretty cool neighbors.” The old chairs we are sitting on are from the atelier of an elderly craftsman, who has recently retired from the profession. At one point, the knifemaker Kiril Mitrashkov shows up; the workshop for Kiril Custom Knives is located next door.
He worries, half-serious, that the area might flood because of the rain.
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
Sometimes unexpected guests arrive at their door. Once, a young itinerant carpenter from Germany appeared out of nowhere (in a bowler hat, a traditional carpenter fashion accessory in Germany, and with a carved wooden cane). He was on a three-year journey through Europe, looking for someone to work for in each country he passed through.
The luck of the self-taught
"You amass both skills and tools over the years," says Ivaylo, who inherited an interest in crafts from his family: his grandfather had a workshop, his great-grandfather built horse carts.
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
The two describe themselves as self-taught. "In 2010, we didn't have a single screwdriver, we started from absolute zero," says Maria, who had enrolled in a course on metal and wood sculpture shortly before that, during a one-year stay in New York. This course unleashed a sudden obsession with wood carving and a flood of plans and ideas. When she returned, she started PUNKT with Ivaylo, with whom she previously studied stage design; they were joined at the time by another long-time friend, Petar Kamenov.
The name of the studio is a play on the Bulgarian translation of "recycling station." A large percentage of the materials they use are procured at flea markets, sometimes taken right out of a trashbin. "We found a great chair recently, there's a video of me dragging it through the streets..."
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
Over time, both their experience and, to some extent, their audience have changed. "Over the years, clients trust us more and more and seek us out because of who we are – their trust is expressed in the fact that they don't ask us for something specific or conventional, but they want us to surprise them," Ivaylo says.
"We step outside of our comfort zone. I love challenges, because challenges always help you learn something new, but sometimes we say no. For example, we have weeded out clients who just want us to fix or restore something."
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
The objects they design are often shown at exhibitions, and last year they were part of the annual Bulgarian Design Review. Do they feel like they are part of a scene, is there an exchange of ideas in their sphere? “Something I miss is having an established community, a ping-pong game of ideas. That's why I try to travel a lot and visit places that do authorial design every chance I get. Here, the attempt at a community is not very strong yet – so what Studio Komplet is doing is extremely important."
Transformation, not restoration
Most of what PUNKT creates is intended for the personal spaces of the people who have contacted them, sometimes it goes to offices (for example, the betahaus coworking space), and they find customers outside of Bulgaria as well; they have been receiving more inquiries from the States recently. Among the more unusual orders they have received is a chair in which a person can read comfortably next to their dog.
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
It’s important to them that an old piece show the marks of its age, that you can see bits of history in the material you use, and that its specific spirit does not disappear when the piece is polished. They recently worked on an apartment in the old center of Sofia, whose interior had the shapes and ornaments typical of the modernism of the 1920s and 30s. Another recent project that sparked their imagination was a complete set of hundred-year-old furniture and interior pieces that had traveled the world and recently arrived from Cuba. "Everything looked quite worn down by old age, but the client wanted it to be preserved in some way. We proposed cutting the furniture in half and using metal for the new parts.”
Photographer: Boryana Pandova
When do they feel most creative – when working on a personal project or when they have a challenging assignment from a client? "Certainly when we're doing something for ourselves and we wish we had more time for it. When you do something for someone else, you have to consider their needs and compromise. We try to find balance, to extract something valuable from each project," Maria says. "We have worked with corporate clients who are open to art objects. We are not a factory after all, everything is made by these two pairs of hands.”
MORE AT WWW.PUNKTWORKSHOP.COM AND @PUNKTWORKSHOP