Arik Levy
Arik Levy: Taking Bentwood in a New Direction
Arik Levy’s career has moved freely between industrial design and art. After studying industrial design at Art Center Europe in Switzerland, he worked in Japan before establishing his practice in Paris, developing furniture alongside sculpture, lighting and installation. This breadth is important to Levy’s work: rather than treating industrial production as separate from creative exploration, he has repeatedly used manufacturing processes as part of the design itself.
His collaboration with TON is a particularly clear expression of that thinking. For the Split collection, introduced in 2015, Levy worked with the Czech manufacturer’s long-established wood-bending expertise to develop a technique in which a single piece of solid wood is split lengthways and the resulting sections bent in opposing directions. The split is not concealed. It becomes both the structural solution and the defining feature of the furniture, allowing the timber to divide as it moves from the seat towards the backrest.
The result connects Levy’s approach to TON’s manufacturing knowledge without simply reproducing the bentwood forms for which the company is historically known. Across the Split chair, armchair, lounge chair and stool, the same construction principle is adapted to different seating types, making the technique itself the consistent element of the collection.
