Douglas Coupland X SwitzerCultCreative

Douglas Coupland is renowned for his literary work, having written 13 best-sellers, including cult 90's novel Generation X. However, many would be surprised to learn that Coupland in fact studied design at university, describing his time at Emily Carr College of Art and Design as the best four years of his life. He graduated with a focus on sculpture and went on to study at The European Design Institute in Milan and later at the Hokkaido College of Art and Design in Japan. In fact, Coupland only started writing to pay his studio bills and the rest, as they say, is history.

Coupland's furniture collection is made by luxury design company SwitzerCultCreative and comprises of writing desks, bookshelves, a chair and lamps. The influence of Coupland's time in Japan is most obvious in his lighting designs, which were inspired by the proportions and sliding doors of Ryoan-ji temple in Kyoto, its stylised base reminiscent of low-lying Oriental tables. The bookshelves were also inspired by his time in Japan, Coupland this time referencing similar shelving that had survived the 1995 Osaka earthquake.

 The writing desks are based on the escritoire style favoured between the 16th and 18th centuries in Europe, particularly in France. Coupland chose this leather-surfaced style for its practicality, traditionally and currently including compartments for ink pots and whatnot can now be used for laptop cables and the likes. 

It's somewhat surprising that a novelist known for his focus on the modern world and the idea of the apocalypse would be so interested in tradition, however he argues despite his modernisation of the functions of the escritoire, that he doesn't see the practise of writing by hand fading away in the future. Manufacturing of the collection is also hand-finished, in the designer's home of British Columbia, in a place called Robert's Creek. The wood, too, is also sourced here, with materials like plywood given a luxury touch with lacquer. As the man himself put it, “These are pieces that will unleash creativity, dopamine, high style and timelessness into their user’s world.”