From the outside, an unassuming 1942 cottage overlooking Vancouver’s harbor is an unexpected place to find Omer Arbel, a designer known for his experimental, amorphous creations for the Canadian furniture and design company Bocci. But inside the 2,600-square-foot home he shares with his girlfriend, musician Aileen Bryant, and a collection of exotic pets, Arbel’s rich imagination and exuberant love of objects are on display. Here, he takes us on a personal tour.
“I have a casual approach to prototyping that involves our day-to-day life. I am always tinkering, and I have lots of transformers to run electricity through things, but Aileen lives with me now, so I have to be respectful. Before she moved in it was like a total madhouse; now I can’t pour concrete in the kitchen. It is a collaboration in a sentimental sense. This work is my life, and the objects are my objects, but how they are arranged and the flow of each room are something we’ve created together here.”