In 2015, I quit my day job on the visual team at a department store and got a studio space in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. I had worked with interior designers and lighting companies and had done some ceramics, but I wanted to use my background in industrial design to focus on my own work. The studio was in this dilapidated building with other artist spaces and residences and a yeshiva on the ground floor. There was a crooked wooden staircase going up to the roof, where I would take smoke breaks. Other people would go up there to party or work on projects and leave things behind. I didn’t have a ton of money, so I would improvise with stuff I found there.

One day I discovered this cinder block and three others like it. They don’t look like standard, double-vaulted cinder blocks—they have only one huge cavity. I saw potential in them as tools because of their shape and weight. Because I don’t have employees or assistants, and some of the stuff I design is precarious and improvised, I knew I needed something to prop things up or clamp things to.

I first used the blocks as uprights to make lighting pieces out of expanding foam. I would mount posts to the cinder blocks and string wire between them, then hang a paper tube to pour the foam solution onto. I’ve also used the blocks to slump clay over and hold sports balls, which I use as casts for my resin work. I have all sorts of weird objects that I found on the street or picked up at dollar stores that have become essential tools. They all have patina and residue that tell the story of specific projects and remind me of moments in time.

A lot of my work is about finding an object and seeing how it dances with something else. Some people are very austere about their design practices, but I am so not. I want it to be fun. I want to make someone laugh. That’s probably why I started making soft products. Yes, it’s a lamp, but it’s also something you can engage with in an unusual way. And why not? There’s something nice about putting sprinkles on your sundae.

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Designer Joseph Algieri’s Off-the-Wall Work Starts With This Cinder Block