Kia Utzon-Frank- Designing Across Disciplines

From marbled cakes to super smart blinds, jewellery designer-turned-product mastermind Kia Utzon-Frank is the definition of a multi-disciplinarian. 

Kia Utzon-Frank’s practice covers a lot of ground, in terms of scale, and physical and thematic context. A graduate from the Royal College of Art’s MA Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalworks & Jewellery program, she has since been busy inventing, baking and experimenting. Her recent works include KUFcakes, delicious sponge cakes with marzipan icing, printed with images of marble to resemble obelisks; sculptures made with paper that is 80% stone; and the Louver Twisting Comb, a control mechanism for blinds or room dividers which rotates strips of flexible material to reveal hints of light and controlled shadow.

As part of this year’s London Design Week, Utzon-Frank showed her work in Design Undefined . The exhibition hosted her first products as KUFStudios, the multidisciplinary design brand she founded to contain her practice. She says: “The idea of starting a company came when I was asked to do this show, and I asked which discipline they would like to exhibit and they said ‘No no no, we want the whole thing! That’s what’s so exciting’… and that was the first time anyone had wanted that.” So she founded KUFStudios, which is built to expand and contract according to where Utzon-Frank’s multifarious experiments take her.

Originally published by Adel El-Assaad on www.kingdome.co 

Photo courtesy of Utzon-Frank Studios.