Oskar Zieta

Architect, process designer and artist at Zieta Studio

Speaker

Architect, process designer and artist. As a doctoral student at ETH Zurich, under the supervision of Prof. Ludger Hovestadt he conducted his first work on the properties and processes for optimizing the production of steel components. Fascinated by the creations of French architect Jean Prouvé, Oskar Zięta asked himself what a world of bionic metal structures could look like using the potential of new technologies. Thanks to his consistent work and dedication, almost two decades after raising his first questions about steel, today he is called sculptor 4.0, and Wired magazine has hailed his objects as “furniture of the future.”

He is the creator of the world’s first inflatable steel profile, whose capabilities he demonstrated in 2010 by designing the Blow & Roll installation for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He has received numerous design awards, including the Red Dot Design Award (2008), the Schweizer Design Preis (2008), the German Design Council Prize (2009), and the Audi Mentor Prize (2011). His NAWA urban installation (Wrocław 2017) was nominated for the prestigious European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award. Zięta’s works are in the collections of the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Pinakothek in Munich, the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.

Zięta’s achievements are founded on his proprietary method of forming steel with internal pressure, FiDU, which has led to the release of such icons as the PLOPP stool and the ULTRALEGGERA chair. In his creations, he manifests a passion for constant discovery of material potential and the artistry of interdisciplinarity. Oskar Zięta lives in Wrocław, where he runs the Zieta Studio, inextricably linked to Zielona Gora, where the production workshop of metal-pumped realizations is located.