Malta-founded design studio AHA Objects has been selected as one of the 20 startups for Catalyse NEB, an EU-backed programme supporting start-ups working at the intersection of sustainability, inclusion, and design. 

“This year-long journey will give us the tools and mentorship we need to scale our impact, grow our business, and connect with like-minded innovators while bringing SORĠI installations to further European cities,” Anna Horvath, the brain and brawn behind the sustainable, experimental deisgn studio said. 

AHA provides a multidisciplinary design approach for her clients including interior design, product design and creative direction, including a line of furniture called SORĠI, an outdoor furniture collection recycling construction waste for Malta’s public spaces.

Anna Horvath is a Hungarian-born narrative designer and architect, the founder of AHA, which is partially based in Malta, working in interior design, installations, and product developments. Always passionate about storytelling, she graduated with an MA in Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins - University of the Arts London.

She has participated in numerous design and architecture projects from small to large scale structures in London, Berlin, Lisbon, Budapest, and Malta, including projects in the permanent exhibition at the prestigious Jewish Museum in Berlin, furniture design for a favela in Rio de Janeiro, or a pop-up store for Hermes Petit collection in Lisbon.

SORĠI has also been named ‘the best creative start-up’ of Malta.

Ms Horvath had been working previously in Hungary, London, Berlin too on furniture collections, and private projects, but it was in Malta when the pandemic hit that she decided to stop from her full-time architecture employment and dive head first into AHA Objects and SORĠI. 

SORĠI, a collection in AHA Objects, focuses on recycling construction waste in ever-changing contexts.

"It is hugely born and inspired by Malta, especially by the local construction industry and my personal experience as an architect," Ms Horvath tells WhosWho.mt.

"I added my visual aesthetics, international take and the love of creating public space installations and furniture, working with communities and develop city-branding tools. In the last three years we went through startup development programs that helped how can we implement in further cities too, as demolition of buildings and increasing amount of construction waste happens unfortunately for many reasons not only as a consequence of development, but war, natural catastrophes or political reasons. Last year we have developed a second scale collection for Budapest that is starting to be implemented at the moment."

“Generally the system of  SORĠI is complex and the result of many people, permits, supplier and institutions. A full system has to be developed before it gets into implementation and thats where we have been planning extensively. This opportunity is so important for us, as the NEB (The New European Bauhaus and the European Innovation and Technology has all the experts and mentors both in design, urbanism and business that will help us to bring SORGI installations for further European cities. “

“The program will be half a year and comes with financial funding and mentorship. We will have events now in Leuven, Belgium, workshops in Berlin and final presentations in Helsinki with potential investors.”

The startup programme which AHA Objects will form part of is part of The New European Bauhaus (NEB), which  is funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology  and supports citizens, grass-roots initiatives and start-ups that embody the core values of the European Commission’s New European Bauhaus movement (sustainability, inclusivity and beauty) through business creation, acceleration, funding, mentorship and network.