Shay Alkalay

Born 1976 in Tel Aviv/Israel.

Shay Alkalay studied at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, at the Bezalel Art and Design Academy in Jerusalem/Israel (BA 2002) and at London’s Royal College of Art at the Department of Design Products with Ron Arads and at Platform 10 with Daniel Charny and Roberto Feo (MA 2006).

In 2007, Alkalay worked for Kobold as a designer for bags, luggage and accessories in Xiamen/China, in 2006 as a design assistant for El Ultimo Grito and from 2002 to 2004 at Zehavi Environmental Design Studio in Tel Aviv.

Together with Yael Mer, Shay Alkalay heads the Raw-Edges Design Studio. While Mer focuses on turning two-dimensional materials into spatial functional forms, Alkalay is mainly interested in how objects move, function and react.

Their works have been given numerous awards, recently among others the Elle Decoration International Design Award in Milan, the prize for furniture design from Homes & Gardens, Classic Design Awards of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the iF Gold Product Design Award in Hanover, the Wallpaper Design Award in London (all in 2009) as well as the Dutch Design Award in Eindhoven (in 2008).

Works of Shay Alkalay and Yael Mer are exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and in the Design Museum in London, among others.