SALON: In one of your interviews you said that you do not like to read newspapers, do not use the Internet and do not watch TV, although you invent new mobile phones, televisions and many other electronics ...

- Well, of course, not quite, but what you say is close to the truth. You know, the main thing for me is observation. I love to read books on ancient Japanese philosophy, and it says that only when a person learns to observe and look at the world through the eyes of a child, can he achieve something in life. Therefore, each of his new project, whether it be a mobile phone, a pencil stand, or, for example, this Cloud sofa, on which we are sitting now, I try to do, completely abstracting from fashion. I do not like intricate design things, functionality and simplicity are more close to me. If you look at my first and last things, you will see that in design they are not very different from each other, except in technical characteristics and materials.

S: How do you get ideas?

 - When customers ask me to come up with something new, I always worry very much that I will not meet expectations. (Laughs.) And if I can’t immediately imagine (at least approximately) how it should look, then it’s very difficult for me to work further.

For example, a few years ago on the river bank, I found an oval-shaped pebble and came up with a mobile phone design. I noticed that when a person holds a mobile phone in his hands, he always turns it around, as if playing. A better form for the game than smooth stones, not found. I created the InfoBar phone model for a different purpose: it is a simple, but very representative and intelligent mobile phone, which you need to formally hold in your hands at important meetings and thus declare your status.

S: Five years ago, you started making furniture ...

 - It did not happen by chance. Firstly, I really love Italy and Italian design. There are two concepts of design - "product design" and "show design." In the last Italians, no one can overtake. And although this is not my style, I thought, why don’t I, for example, make book shelves or a shelf for my own invented LCD monitor? Since this all started. Italians liked it. I began to do upholstered furniture quite recently, one of my first experiences was a massage chair for SANYO. Sofa Cloud ("Cloud") I came up with one of the April days. Clouds at this time of the year for some reason seemed to me exactly of this form - long and without "little sheep".