Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck of New York-based Birsel + Seck are the designers of HBF’s new Motive collection of conference and meeting tables, their first HBF commission. View Motive video perspective.

Birsel was born in the ancient Turkish port city of Izmir, the Turkish name for Smyrna. She studied industrial design at Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. A Fulbright scholarship enabled her to obtain a Master’s degree at New York’s Pratt Institute. Her thesis project, The Water Room, won awards from ID Magazine and the Design of the Future competition in Japan. She then designed a collection of office accessories with Bruce Hannah, her former Pratt instructor and the designer of office furniture for Knoll. I In 1997, she began work on the Resolve office system for Herman Miller, which reposes in the permanent design study collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Bibi Seck was born in Paris and spent his formative years there and in London and Dakar, Senegal. He received his Master’s degree at ESDI (School of Industrial Design) in Paris. Before moving to New York in 2003, Seck was an automobile designer at Renault for 12 years, creating the interiors of Scenic I, Twingo II, Trafic and Scenic II. Scenic I and Trafic won Car of the Year awards from the European trade press, in 1996 and 2002 respectively. While at Renault, Seck designed the F1 Micrograph watch for Tag Heuer, winning the prestigious 2002 Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.

In 2002, Birsel and Seck collaborated to design a concept interior for Renault automobiles, which led to the formation of their product-design studio, Birsel + Seck. Their clients include Herman Miller, HP, Merati, Target and Acme. Their work appeared in the National Design Triennial 2006 at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Recently, they were invited to redesign the interior of New York’s taxicab, which was presented to the public at the New York Auto Show 2007.