Steel · Welding · Reclaimed material
David Mălăia
Sculptural objects built from steel and salvaged metal — where one cut, one weld and one gesture are repeated until the material gives something back.
Selected
Index of works
coming soon
About — 01
Welder before designer
David Mălăia came to design the long way round: first as a welder, learning the material through hours of heat, sparks and correction, and only afterwards as a student of Furniture & Interior Architecture at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.
That order matters. The work does not begin with a drawing and end with a fabricator — it begins and ends in the same pair of hands. Forms are found by making: cutting, joining, grinding, repeating a move until it stops being a technique and becomes a language.
Read the full story →Process
Operations
Source
Off-cuts, scrap and discarded steel carry a history the material cannot hide — a weld seam, a drilled hole, a bend from another life. Rather than erasing it, the work builds on top of it.
Repeat
A single element, repeated dozens or hundreds of times. The rhythm of the hand becomes the structure, and the small failures between repeats become the surface.
Finish
Welded, ground back, patinated, or left raw and oiled. Every piece is made start to finish in the workshop, by hand, by one person.