Los Angeles-based lighting and furniture designer Brendan Ravenhill is leading an interesting life. From a youth in West Africa, to running a growing studio in Los Angeles, he's made stops along the way that involve lobstering, boat-building, academia and a Schindler house.

In this episode, Brendan reveals how profound grief led him to find solace in making things with his hands. While he's got a rigorous work-ethic, play tops his list of to-dos. He shares with us the story of his unusual courtship with his now-wife, and melts us like buerre with his French.

“I just kind of grew up always being the weight on the end of the board as he cut it, or the person getting him nails that fell on the ground, the little boy just at his father’s workbench.”

— Brendan Ravenhill

Brendan talks about the experience of raising a barn and meeting someone special. With that come-hither gaze, I'm guessing that was his future-wife taking the picture...

Fresh off his recent visit to his childhood town in Cote d'Ivoire, Brendan shares these compelling images with us.

For more on Brendan Ravenhill Studio visit brendanravenhill.com. Keep tabs on Brendan or Brendan Ravenhill Studio on Instagram.

If you want more Clever, sign up for the newsletter to get notified of new episodes as they're released. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And most importantly, please spread the word to anyone who you think would dig it.

Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, SoundCloud, or subscribe using our feed:http://clever.libsyn.com/rss via your favorite podcast app. And please, if you like us, give us a rating!

Special thanks to Chris Modl of Yore Studio for editing this episode.
Music in this episode courtesy of El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

Keep Listening

Featured

Ep. 216: Clever Extra - Interior Designer Kerrie Kelly on Uniting Beauty and Function

Interior designer and lifestyle expert Kerrie Kelly is known for her distinctive California-inspired design philosophy. She got her start at Ralph Lauren Home and then moved to Del Webb Corporation where she was a boots-on-the-ground high-volume designer of homes, before founding her multi-faceted design studio, Kerrie Kelly Design Lab, in 1995. A graduate of both design and business school, she blends both of these skill sets in her work as an interior designer, trendspotter, and brand partner. She’s driven by a commitment to bringing thoughtful design into everyday life, which for Kerrie means blending beauty with functionality and translating that through a palette of luxurious and organic materiality.

Ep. 215: Kinfolk’s Idris Brewster Uses AR to Empower Collective Memory Building

Artist, creative technologist, and educator, Idris Brewster grew up in Brooklyn, being filmed for a documentary about his education as a black student at a prestigious, primarily white, school. His coming-of-age, only partially caught on camera, included a lot of basketball and hands-on artistic development. A grant awarded in college gave him early access to VR technology which opened a path to combining all of his talents and interests and expressing them through new media. Now, as co-founder and Executive Director of Kinfolk Foundation, he’s harnessing augmented reality, location-based technology, and community to engage in placing digital monuments in public spaces, memory building, and foregrounding the Black, Brown and Queer histories that have been intentionally silenced.

Ep. 214: Architect & Designer Marc Thorpe on Relationships, Responsibility, and Uncertainty

Architect & designer Marc Thorpe spent his youth, just outside of Washington DC, drawing and learning to navigate a destabilizing home environment. The son of two academics, he learned discipline, rigor, and resilience from his mom, while his dad, a critical thinker, taught him to challenge and interrogate everything. Always knowing he’d be an artist, he studied Industrial Design and Architecture. Now, he’s the Founder & Principal of Marc Thorpe Design, a multi-disciplinary studio, and co-founder (along with Claire Pijoulat) of Edifice Upstate, a design & build architecture agency. As someone with a unique ability to seize every opportunity, as well as create them from scratch, he’s worked with world-renowned designers, lead groundbreaking projects, and is leading the charge toward more responsible architecture. And while Marc has always been certain that he’d be a creative, it is uncertainty that is his greatest inspiration.

Ep. 213: The Quiet Rebellion of Biodesigner Natsai Audrey Chieza

Natsai Audrey Chieza spent her youth in Zimbabwe in a close-knit extended family where she and her cousins were “in each others’ pockets.” In her teenage years the national economy crashed, necessitating a family relocation to the UK, and she began learning the skill of “not belonging.” Architecture studies proved alienating so she found a way to combine them with her love of fashion (to the consternation of her professors.) Rejecting the prescribed path of a professional architect, she instead pursued a postgraduate program in Material Futures that set her on a path of designing with bacteria. Now, she’s founded Faber Futures, a biodesign studio, and Normal Phenomena of Life, an artful lifestyle and fashion brand that also functions as a working prototype of a new model bioeconomy. She’s spent her whole life quietly not doing what was expected of her, and in this space of outsiderness she’s been very busy creating new paradigms for how we might collaborate with nature and new models for the equitable stewardship of these new biotechnologies. So, in terms of cultural infrastructure, she is an architect after all!

Ep. 212: HODINKEE’s Ben Clymer on Agency, Permanence, and the Talismans of Life

Ben Clymer grew up in a New York suburb, raised by middle-class public school teachers and enamored by his grandfather’s swagger and style. An Omega Speedmaster, a gift from said grandfather, is the piece that captured his heart and sets his story in motion. A painstakingly shy student, he began to gain self-confidence in high-school and a need to differentiate in college. In 2008 he started a tiny blog, HODINKEE, a passion-project about watches that gained traction and sent him on a mission to get a Master’s in Journalism. Since then, HODINKEE has led to creative collaborations with the most prestigious watch brands and famous rockstars, and grown into a multi-channel platform that has transformed the world of luxury watches.

Ep. 4: Brendan Ravenhill

Keep Listening

Hear every episode with one click.

Resources

Listen

Ep. 4: Brendan Ravenhill

Keep Listening

Ep. 5: Rebecca Finell

Ep. 3: Amy + Jaime (aka The First Pancake)

Hear every episode with one click.

Resources

Listen