Alvin Teng Quotes

So if I want to buy a light in a shop and I don`t find a light that I like, I think to myself what would I like? What would I like to buy? Then I started to imagine and design it for myself a lot of the time.

I`d love to be approached to do ordinary things more.

You know some people say that you make watches or perfume bottles, it`s all different things.

Design schools are good, I guess, sometimes I visit schools, but they are very very limiting.

I was sort of open to do anything, I was free.

I made some salt and pepper shakers a while back and waited three years for them to come.

I never buy magazines, I never even buy books.

My life style in a sense is kind of private.

I have a lot of objects in my space, little things, reminders, memories.

And where I grew up in Australia, surfing was a part of culture.

But to me, to be original is to be yourself.

You know like it has its own personality, its own character.

If you see something that you feel is familiar it gives you an important kind of emotional connection.

I don`t like to make my life like a book.

Yeah, just designing stuff, but I don`t think there`s any big difference between chairs, cars, jewelry or anything. It`s all design.

To create well I have to be in a good mood, happy and cool.

You know that`s history, that`s why some people say that my stuff is retro, but I don`t agree.

I think it`s really important to design things with a kind of personality.

Yeah, my dream would be to work for 6 months and then have 6 months to play, just snowboarding, surfing, and going to cool places to listen and be alone and kinda chill out.

I don`t have any furniture of mine in my room.

People kind of tend to mystify design and architecture by suggesting you need to train.

Well, I never studied design and I went to art school to study art, you know, sculpture and things like that, and ended up making things like sculpture and started making chairs and jewelry together and that`s how I started.

I`m interested in youth culture and popular culture.

If you can just be yourself, then you have to be original because there`s no one like you.

Now I`m doing more snowboarding but I have to get back into surfing again.

So if I design it and then go away, it`s still living somewhere and it still exists by itself without me.

If I can feel freedom then I can create.

But if you are an artist then you don`t have to just make pictures on canvas. It`s just about expression and expressing yourself.

In Japan, Australia, and England there is such a strong youth culture.

Then I started to do furniture and interiors for a friend and just to get stuff in a magazine, and then slowly started to build up and started to doing exhibitions.

I`ve always listened to a lot of film music, actually.

I was much more interested in making things than in designing them.

If somebody asked me about my inspiration I would say that it`s not the peopleand it`s not the things, it`s travel and experiencing different environments.