Bored Panda reached out to Katia Tolstykh, a Berlin-based interior and furniture designer, co-founder of OddinShape studio, and the creator behind the Sorry For Design Instagram account. Today, Tolstykh has 9 years of experience in design. In 2020, she along with her husband founded Odd In Shape, a multi-disciplinary design studio that works mainly in digital art, dreamscape interiors, and furniture design.
Tolstykh told us that Sorry For Design was created as a source of inspiration and fun. “Instagram, Pinterest, and other resources focus on beautiful and professional products, while a massive number of things made by non-professionals are left out of the equation,” Tolstykh explained.
According to the interior and furniture designers, they may be funny, vulgar, naive, or disgusting, but they are all worthy of attention. “My account is a collection of projects by notable designers, and by ordinary people. All these projects are done with soul,” Tolstykh said.
When it comes to eccentric and unusual design, Tolstykh believes that it not only catches the eye but also “cheers people up.” Moreover, “everyone has their own reasons to like this design. It's hard to speak for everyone,” she said.
Moreover, the examples shared on Sorry For Design, Tolstykh argues, are really more about art and flamboyance than functional furniture. “They’re about the search for new forms, about scandal, about the rejection of common notions, about the expansion of the boundaries of the permitted and the familiar,” she explained and added that “This is art.”
In many ways, interior design is no different than fashion. It has its own trends, styles that change with years, seasons and people’s lifestyles. Various external influences are also to blame for fleeting interior design styles, social change and technological advancement included.
Previously, our fellow Bored Panda writer Rokas spoke with an interior architect and lecturer at Vilnius College of Design named Judita Striukienė. According to her, nowadays eclectic solutions are on the rise; it's really popular to combine different interior design styles
"In fact, it's quite rare to discover a place that is true to just one school. When you say a home was designed according to a certain style, you usually mean that some elements have an advantage in that place over the others or there is some sort of leitmotif throughout the entire space," the interior architect told Bored Panda.
On the other hand, there exist main aspects of good interior design that defy time and trends. According to Striukienė, living spaces have to be functional. Everything else is more or less decor, creating a certain mood," she said.
This is why many interior designers start the design procedure by getting to really know the person or family who are going to live in a particular space. Their lifestyles, preferences, likes and dislikes all make up the end interior the designer comes up with.
Although most people would agree on what they call a bad or a good interior, that doesn’t mean that tacky and eccentric interiors don’t find their audience. On the contrary, it's no secret that the internet has been fascinated with quirky interiors, bizarre furniture, crazy McMansions and everything in between.
These unusual spaces seem to both transgress universal aesthetics on what we consider appealing and common sense, and show that there can also be no rules whatsoever.
