Ontologically, the “thing” is an elusive category—so broad and expansive that it seems to belong more to the realm of ideas than to that of material reality. Yet we live in a culture obsessed with naming, classifying, and pigeonholing every object into a specific function, stabilising its charge and disarming its potential. With 25KG, his latest project, Konstantin Grcic turns the ontological condition of things into the very engine of radicality. Not as an assault on the status quo, as it used to be, but as the introduction of generative doubt: a condition of ambiguity, ambivalence, and multivalence in which objects are meant to be experienced, handled, and lived through unexpected interactions and constantly shifting readings. More than a collection of furniture, 25KG questions the very notion of furnishing itself, opening up new possibilities for how we relate to the things around us. In these pages, Grcic discusses the project and its intersections with both the contemporary design landscape and the traditions that continue to shape it.

Daria Miricola: 25KG is a rather loaded name: it folds together the founding year, 2025, and your initials, but it also reads as a literal unit of weight. Where did the idea originate, and what kind of gravity did you want the label to carry from the outset?

Konstantin Grcic: Ever since I was a child, I knew my initials were the same as ‘kilogram.’ I always liked that—and also the pictogram of the cast-iron weight. So the idea had been with me for a very long time. 25KG was the right moment to use it. Why 25? I needed a name that could be registered as a trademark. And, incidentally, 25 kg is a weight most people can lift—which is why disaster-relief sandbags weigh 25 kg.

DM: The radical design movements of the ‘60s and ’70s operated in open antagonism toward bourgeois domesticity and consumer culture. Do you think the cultural meaning of furniture has shifted since then? In other words: does a radical object still have the same capacity to destabilise the status quo, or has design itself become too self-aware for that?

KG: Yes, I think the meaning of furniture has changed. In the ‘60s and ’70s, radical design still believed objects could directly challenge society. Today, design is much more self-aware—and quickly absorbed by the market, media and culture industry. Even radical gestures become style very fast. But objects can still unsettle us in quieter ways: through ambiguity, discomfort, humour, vulnerability, or by resisting easy categorisation. Perhaps radicality today is less about opposition and more about creating doubt, friction or emotional complexity within everyday life.

DM: More broadly, what is the condition of the European design scene today? Where do you sense genuine vitality, and where do you feel the field has become complacent or risk-averse?

KG: There is still a great deal of vitality in the European design scene—especially in smaller, independent structures where design, research, craft and culture overlap more freely. I often find the most interesting work happening at the edges, outside the large commercial system.

At the same time, much of mainstream design has become cautious and overly image-conscious. There is a strong tendency toward safe aesthetics, familiar narratives, and market-friendly ideas. Risk today is often simulated, rather than truly taken.

DM: You have worked for decades within large industrial ecosystems while simultaneously maintaining a highly singular authorial voice. How different is it to operate through your own platform, 25KG, rather than through established clients and manufacturers? What do you gain—and lose—in each model?

KG: Working through my own platform, 25KG, gives me a different kind of freedom and immediacy. Decisions become faster, more instinctive, and sometimes more personal. At the same time, it also means taking responsibility for everything—production, logistics, communication… and risk.

Working with established manufacturers is slower and more complex, but it allows projects to develop with greater industrial depth, technical precision and long-term impact. Ideally, both models nourish each other.

DM: 25KG presents objects simply as ‘THINGS,’ catalogued according to the order in which they appear: THING_01, THING_02, and so on. There is something almost proto-scientific, or even deadpan, about that protocol.Where does this taxonomy come from?

KG: The taxonomy is intentionally neutral and open. I liked the idea of avoiding predefined categories or narratives and simply letting things appear one after another, almost like findings or observations. The term THING felt direct, unpretentious, and slightly anonymous—which gives the objects more freedom to become whatever people imagine them to be.

DM: The first THINGS already seem to share a trajectory or common grammar: raw materials, structural directness, an almost anti-rhetorical clarity. Are you consciously building a language, or do you prefer to let affinities emerge a posteriori?

KG: I’m not trying to build a “language” in a strategic sense. For me, it’s more about attitude. I think there’s a major shortcoming in the industry in this regard. Attitude is something very valuable… but of course it also demands a lot. Strength, confidence, perseverance. The affinities emerge quite naturally through the way we work and what interests us—structure, directness, reduction, certain materials, certain moods. Over time, connections become visible almost by themselves.

DM: How does 25KG approach pricing and communication without falling back on the usual luxury design tropes?

KG: By trying to stay direct and transparent. We avoid artificial narratives of exclusivity and instead focus on the objects themselves—how they are made, used, and communicated. The challenge is to remain accessible without becoming generic, and precise without becoming corporate.

DM: Your work has often generated sharply polarised reactions. Chair_ONE, for instance, is now cult, yet when it first appeared it triggered fascination, bewilderment, even ridicule in certain circles. How do you personally relate to the idea of controversy?

I never saw controversy as a goal in itself. Usually, it simply means that something unsettles existing expectations. If a project creates strong reactions, positive or negative, it often means it touched a nerve. Over time, people tend to become more comfortable with things that initially felt strange, and that grows a stronger bond.

DM: And once a controversial object becomes institutionalised—collected by museums, canonised by the market—does it lose part of its original charge? What does it take today for a piece of furniture to still feel genuinely controversial?

KG: Yes, inevitably, once an object becomes familiar, collected, and historically absorbed, part of its disruptive energy disappears. Today, genuinely controversial furniture is probably less about shocking form and more about questioning systems of production, value, use, or desire in subtle and intelligent ways.

DM: Finally, which future THINGS are currently taking shape? And more importantly: are there territories—materially, politically, or culturally—that you still feel design has not fully managed to tap into?

KG: There are several new THINGS taking shape at the moment. What still interests me are territories where design becomes less resolved and more open. I think design still struggles with ambiguity. It often wants to explain too much, optimise too much, behave too correctly.