United States: Airbnb has appointed Miklu Silvanto, a member of Apple’s industrial design group, to lead its Samara design studio project.
Dezeen reports that Silvanto will now lead the Industrial Design and Interaction team at Backyard, an initiative launched in 2018 to explore innovative ways to design, build and share the homes of the future. Backyard is an offshoot of Airbnb in-house design studioSamara.
According to the Backyard website, the project aims to “prototype new ways to build and share homes, guided by the ambition to achieve a more humanistic, future-oriented and waste-conscious design.”
Samara says the team is made up of industrial and interaction designers, architects, roboticists, mechanical and hardware engineers, materials scientists and policy experts.
Silvanto said Dezeen“Samara has a huge ambition that will be very difficult to achieve, but that’s exactly the kind of crazy big bet these kinds of companies should be making. The nature of the work and the creative approach we take makes me optimistic for the future.
Silvanto’s experience before joining the rental company includes graduating from the Royal College of Art, co-founding design agency Aivan in 2007 and working in Apple’s industrial design group under CDO Jony Ive from 2011 until last month.
He has also worked on and been credited with various Apple design patents covering AirPods, Apple Watch, iPhone and a number of key accessories.
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