Andy Martin

London-based Andy Martin, architect of the bentwood Thonet bicycle, makes things simultaneously baroque and minimal. Last September, Martin presented three colourful polyester-resin furniture pieces aptly titled Blocks A/B/C—a stool, side table, and coffee table, loosely abstracted and produced in a 26-piece series. Martin has played with resin and fibreglass since he shaped surfboards in his parents’ garage at age 16, but Blocks evolved from scale architectural models cast in a silicone mould, and then milled and polished by hand. “The idea was to start the series with very simplistic forms, to focus on the material and its visual qualities,” Martin says of his Blocks.