Sum of both parts: In conversation with Doshi Levien

This article first appeared in Mix Interiors #230

Images courtesy of Doshi Levien

It’s a couple of degrees below freezing in London and yet inside Doshi Levien’s Columbia Road studio, a former furniture warehouse, the sun is shining and it’s a balmy 20 degrees. Taking up two floors, I meet Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien in a bright room that resembles a relaxed gallery space more than working studio – full of well-placed, covetable furniture from the studio’s archives and drawers of mood boards, drawings and colourful swatches bathed in sunlight.

Meeting as design students at London’s Royal College of Art in 1995, Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien established their eponymous studio in 2000, and although from very different backgrounds, both share a similar appreciation for making and design due to a close relationship with craftsmanship they experienced from an early age. For Levien, life began in Scotland next door to his parent’s toy factory, where he spent much of his childhood playing and crafting with the various materials available to him. “There’s never really been that kind of a boundary between sort of life and industry,” he says. “My parents starting their business together was another influence in my life, in the way that it felt so completely natural for me to start the business with Nipa.”