Defining moments interview series: Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby

The pair are fascinating to watch, conversationally, and it’s not hard to see why their partnership works well. There is mild, good-natured disagreement at every turn, followed by good-natured resolution. The design process is similar, the less talkative Barber concurs: “We mostly don’t agree on design stuff throughout the project,” he says, “but ultimately one person is talking more sense than the other, in each little twist and turn of the project and by the end we have a project we’re both happy with.”

Osgerby does say: “The first decade was a mix of joy and absolute terror, proper not-sleeping-at-night worry, before we could get to the point of even building a team. But when we brought in people who could really help us, it gave us the mental space to think creatively.” Being asked to design the Olympic torch for 2012 was a defining moment, he says. “I watched the 1992 Winter Games, where Philippe Starck designed the torch, and I realised it was the only way you could represent your country in design. And that became an option for us in our professional lifetime.” In design terms, it encapsulated everything the pair stand for.

Says Osgerby: “It carried a lot of narrative in its design, and it pushed British manufacturing to be a beacon. We used the very best aerospace tech to get it made.” The pair worked on the design for two years, “night and day”, before only just being invited to the opening ceremony at the last minute (thanks to a news interview revealing they hadn’t been).

Osgerby also cites the Vitra Pacific chair as a crucial point in the Barber Osgerby story, true to the principle of “full performance, quiet design”. “It was a project that rethought the way that work-live happens, and a response to the way we’ve thought about chairs as machines we sit on.” Barber Osgerby’s first project for Vitra, the iconic all-plastic tiltable Tip Ton chair, is ten years old this year. Last year Vitra released Tip Ton RE, made from recycled polypropylene, and later this year it will launch a Tip Ton miniature, poster and limited edition artworks designed by Barber Osgerby.

The pair recently launched a range of purist taps and showers for Axor, the bathroom brand that ticks all the Barber Osgerby user-experience boxes. “The project means you can conserve water and have greater precision of water flow control and experience,” says Osgerby. “We spend a lot of time with engineers and technologists, and water is a particularly big topic.”

The workplace of the future is a real area of interest for the pair. Says Barber: “The real challenge for most people now is how to create a workable office space in their home that can also be tidied away, or doesn’t dominate their living room or their dining area or their kitchen – something that’s usable and functional that can be somehow hidden.” He adds: “Everyone’s connected everywhere, so the future of the office is really a piece of upholstery. It’s basically a sofa. That you can sit on, that has a table, power and can be configured in many ways, and has a sort of architectural element to it.”

Barber Osgerby’s work is, in some ways, hard to define. It ranges from £2 coins (in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the London Underground) to chairs for the De La Warr Pavilion, and Japanese-style paper lights to V&A installations. It’s often quintessentially British, yet spans international clients, from Knoll and Cappellini to B&B Italia and Swarovski. At the same time, it’s easy. “Really, what we’re doing is making one version of something that will be made a lot more times for loads of people to live with,” says Osgerby. The difference between what they do as designers and what they do as artists, is, he concludes: “You’re appreciated by millions, but your objects are in the singular numbers. It’s a different way of seeing the world.”

First published on the FT.com and produced in partnership with the Financial Times Commercial department.