My life in 5 objects: Felix Kilbertus

Olympus OM-1

Borrowing my father’s OM-1 was my first real experience with a proper camera. Launched in 1972 as the world’s lightest SLR, it paired crisp, ergonomic design with extraordinary simplicity, a self-explanatory machine for anyone familiar with analogue photography. From an early age, I’ve loved taking photographs. There’s a joy in framing a motif, letting light inscribe what catches your eye, and editing reality as you see fit. It’s an “active-passive” act: first observing, then composing consciously. Today, anyone can capture astonishing images on a smartphone, and I have worn out a number of phone cameras myself.

We live in a world of photorealism, perhaps more than ever, thanks to AI-generated imagery: clearly not photography, as not taken with a camera, yet somehow indistinguishable from it, all the while modern cameras are increasingly relying on embedded algorithms to refine light, contrast, and colour. Photography, whether taken or viewed, remains central to how I understand design: a tool for exploring, communicating, and shaping perception. Without design, I suspect photography would be my main mode of expression.

Citroën DS

The Citroën DS fascinated me as a child. Its unusual shape reminded me of a shark – alive and almost menacing when parked, then rising gracefully on its hydraulic suspension as if stretching for a journey. The swivelling headlamps following the direction of the single-spoke steering wheel, the fluid movement of the body not only forward but also up and down – all suggested a living, kinetic sculpture.

Reading Roland Barthes’ Nouvelles Mythologies later confirmed my intuition: the DS is not just a car, but an extraordinary artifact of imagination and design. Its form and function remain unmatched, a unique leap in automotive history that inspires my thinking about space, movement and light in design.

Secateurs

I care for plants. Their living forms, mathematical structures, and growth cycles inspire and calm me. Gardening requires patience, observation, and subtle intervention – qualities I bring to design leadership. Like a gardener, I plant ideas, nurture them, prune where necessary, and let them flourish at their own pace. These secateurs embody the same principles: simplicity, precision, and ergonomic elegance. Two sharp steel blades, a perfectly loaded spring, and lightweight, slip-resistant handles. A tool that blends function and beauty, a quiet reminder that good design serves both hand and mind.

BIC Round Stic

The BIC Crystal is iconic, but in my experience, it’s frustrating for drawing: they tend to leave too much ink on the tip after the longer, continuous and faster strokes of sketching. So, you often start your next line with a blotch, reliably killing the fl ow of your drawing. In the US, I discovered the Round Stic, a ballpoint that balances precision, fast drying, and tactile simplicity. Its semitransparent barrel reveals the cartridge without giving away all its secrets – a small, elegant solution to an everyday problem. I carry a pack of these pens back on every US trip, a reminder that even in ubiquitous, everyday objects, thoughtful design endures.

The Monolith – 2001: A Space Odyssey

Cinema is a portal into fully imagined worlds, and few directors mastered it like Stanley Kubrick. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ stands above all for its visionary design, from the functional elegance of the astronauts’ tools to HAL 9000, a prescient study of AI. At the heart of the fi lm is the monolith: a smooth black rectangle, mysterious and unexplainable, yet perfectly proportioned to provoke thought about humanity and its destiny. It resonates with me as a designer – a symbol of the power of form, minimalism, and conceptual depth. Ironically, billions of people now touch devices that echo this alien artifact daily.

This interview was originally published in the Spring edition of the Interior Motives magazine. Subscribe here.