Tom Chung in his workspace in Toronto on March 14, 2019.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Industrial designer Tom Chung gets his fair share of visitors. His studio, based in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood (named for its position at the intersection of four rail lines) and located along a busy thoroughfare, looks a lot like a storefront – and he’ll often leave the door open when the weather’s warm. “I get a lot of random walk-ins, like ‘Hey, you have a computer, can you print this thing for me?’” he says. Though his talents are many, Chung doesn’t offer this particular service.
The Vancouver-born Chung relocated to Toronto for a job at design and manufacturing company Umbra. “It was a great first job for sure,” he says. “I got to learn a lot about manufacturing and production very early on in my career.” He set out on his own in 2016, developing designs for bent galvanized steel stools, powder-coated steel tables that stack to create shelving units and a laser-cut light surround that casts filigree shadows on the wall (to name a few). A recent collection of slatted storage pieces for EQ3, called Plank, will be released in May.
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“The way I approach product design is very much driven by the fact that the object operates in a certain context,” he says. Chung recalls, when renovating his parents’ home, an instance where he required illumination over an entryway and up into an adjacent room. In other words, he needed a light that shone in two directions. “That was a very specific context and I couldn’t really find anything for that condition. So, that’s where Beam lamp came from.” The two-way lamp, designed by Chung and produced by Muuto, can rotate in any direction, and a playful dial controls the amount of light that emits from either end.
At about 250 square feet, Chung’s Toronto studio isn’t a fabrication facility, but functions as an all-purpose space (he gets his early prototypes built by industrial manufacturers, with exponentially larger facilities, in Toronto’s suburbs). “I think the constraints of its size has forced me to work in a certain way,” he says. “Everything I do is really small, because I can’t really store huge things in here.” Nor can he rely on extravagant materials or production techniques for that wow factor. “You have to think a lot more about what makes the design interesting,” he says.
Chung shares the studio with his girlfriend, who’s an artist but works at a university most of the week. Typically, he’ll hunker down to research, make 3-D digital models, or build full-scale paper mock-ups of his product designs here. The northeast light is great for photography, and posting to Instagram is, according to Chung, “hugely essential,” when making connections with manufacturers abroad. “I don’t know if it’s my favourite room,” he says and laughs, “but it’s definitely the most necessary.”
Chung recently completed a residency at The Banff Centre in Alberta, “where you have everything you could possibly want at your fingertips,” he says. His time there has the designer dreaming of a next iteration of his studio that would allow for onsite fabrication.
But for now, the space serves its purpose, and it’s close to home. The daily commute brings inspiration, too. On the walk, Chung observes what he calls the “urban chaos of development” – ceaseless construction, pile driving and fresh graffiti tags – which are essential to his experience of the city. His designs live comfortably in this context. Those galvanized steel stools he designed? “I like the idea of just throwing one out onto the street and having someone graffiti and beat the crap out of it, but it could still look cool,” he says.
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