Blok - The Brutalist Companion
The story behind the blok
I’ve always believed that good design earns its place in your life by being both beautiful and useful. The Blok takes this idea and distills it into its purest form…a cube.
The inspiration for Blok began years ago, long before Trouble Studio existed. In a previous chapter of my career, I designed concrete skateparks. On my last day, I took a small cube of concrete as a memento, a simple, weighty reminder of the work and craft that had defined that time in my life. That cube came home with me, and over the years it quietly proved its worth, sometimes as a bookend, sometimes as a doorstop, sometimes just as an object I liked to look at.
That modest block became the blueprint for the first piece in the Blok Collection - a study in function without compromise. Cast in solid concrete, it’s bold, minimal, and quietly architectural. On its own, it’s a sculptural statement. In use, it adapts, a doorstop, a bookend, a paperweight, or, with the optional topface hole, an incense holder.
Alongside it sits BLOK Vase, a new exploration of contrast. Here, the same architectural cube cradles a slender glass test tube, designed for a single stem or minimalist arrangement. The effect is elemental: hard meets soft, permanent meets fleeting, brutalism meets botany.
The BLOK Collection is more than a set of objects , it’s a personal story cast in concrete, an exercise in stripping design down to its essentials and letting material and form speak for themselves. Whether holding incense, flowers, or simply its own shape, BLOK reminds us that beauty can be found in the simplest geometry.
Every BLOK piece is handmade to order. Concrete, once cast, is permanent, and with that permanence comes responsibility. I don’t want to create objects that might one day be discarded. Instead, each BLOK is only made when someone genuinely wants it for their home, to live with and cherish for life. It’s a slower, more sustainable way of making, rooted in respect for both material and owner.
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