BEHIND THE SCENES

A Zen Moment With Yves Béhar

The Swiss designer explains the remarkably therapeutic process that takes place when he sits down to sketch.

Béhar draws a prefabricated house and an autonomous car—current projects that reflect his obsession with how environments can be rethought in the name of efficiency and personalization. He often references original sketches from other projects, as in the series of drawings for his Sayl chair for Herman Miller that sits nearby.

Yves Béhar, Designer
At Fuseproject’s studio in San Francisco

“Thinking about the design process without sketching is like thinking about a conversation as just its conclusion. Sketching is a way to empty the brain of ideas—good and bad ones—and the only way to keep the flow of ideas as ideas. It’s an internal dialogue, a way to have multiple conversations, and to have multiple creative elements float around all at once. The minute you try to use a more formal way of expressing an idea, like with a rendering or 3D program, you constrain it to a dimension and reality. ”

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