A knitted chair,

Alejandro Bona’s chair, knitted from plastic cable, started out in a knitting machine for socks. Bona then rebuilt the same machine on a larger scale in order to produce an almost seamless chair. The plastic is heat-bonded on the inside to make it rigid.

A stopper in a wine bottle inspired Tomas Kràl’s work, which plays with the fragility and hardness of glass against the soft sturdiness of cork. His pendant light is held together without screws; instead, the glass slips into the cork fitting and stays in place through pressure alone.

Another design with a prosaic inspiration is Ilze Kalnberzina’s range of metal desk accessories, which take their golden hues from simple cardboard boxes.

This autumn ECAL launches its new “Design & Luxury” MA course, headed by Augustin Scott de Martinville, a member of Belgium-based collective Big Game. “We have been working with these high-end companies in France and Switzerland for a couple of years now,” says Alexis Georgacopoulos, Head of the industrial design course at ECAL. “The luxury business is big nowadays and no other school has this specialisation.”