On the train down to Kortrijk and the 2016 Biennale Interieur we started drafting this introduction. The talk was of the 25th anniversary edition, the relevance of the event in context of the European furniture and design market - then and now - and the strength(s) of contemporary Belgian furniture design Then we saw that organisers were charging 50 cents to use the toilet. In a fair. Ctrl A. Ctrl X. It may "only" be 50 cents, but.... having charged visitors €22,00 to enter a fair. You
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The first object to attract our attention on Atelier Bonk's stand in the Ventura At Work exhibition in Milan was the candle stick holder. That is until it was pointed out to us that it is actually a potato masher. It's a very simple mistake to make. Especially if you're as daft as us. Bruges based Atelier Bonk is the result of a co-operation between designer Tim "Interror.be" Baute and graphic artist Stefaan de Croock, a.k.a. Strook. The name of the atelier may cause uncontrolled
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Ahead of Milan Design Week we received an email from a Belgian designer of our acquaintance letting us know where we could view their work. The email ended with a euphoric "This is finally Belgium's year!" A thought that really appealed to us, because as we wrote last year Belgium has the potential to be every bit as successful as Holland. And indeed should be. And so with an optimistic heart we set off to the Triennale di Milano to view the exhibition "Belgium is Design" And experienced our
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We were famously first drawn to the work of Belgian designer Tim Baute aka Interror.be via a lamp he showed at Designers Fair Cologne 2010. And his SevenUp, a moody and reduced down chandelier, remains one of our reference products. Tim is however a metalworker by training and so it was good to see him presenting a new steel product range for his debut at DMY Berlin. And although named after the B-2 Bomber, the range doesn't have its origins in the secretive world of military aviation, but
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For the last in our series of EuroDesignExhibition previews we travel to the spiritual home of Europe. Belgium. Aside from quite possibly Luxembourg, which only Luxembourgians would be cheeky enough to contend even counts, there can no country that has become more identified with the founding ideals of the European community than Belgium. But has it lost its culture identity? Or is a cultural stronger than politics? The question of creating a piece that represents your country wasn't that
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Despite the fact the everyone knows that the Eurovision Song Contest hasn't been any good since Bucks Fizz got all pseudo-erotic in Dublin in 1981: the carcass of the dream is still flogged remorselessly every spring. Last year Germany won and so on May 14th Dusseldorf will host European broadcasting's biggest gannet fest. Perhaps the saddest aspect of the whole tawdry spectacle is that amid the drive to appeal to the lowest common denominator of European taste, the identity and
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The first thing to say about Designers Fair 2011 is that it was smaller than last year. The second point to say is that the location was a lot poorer than last. The first point is in itself no bad thing - the second is. Now you know us. For us one of the genuine joys of a design week is the chance it offers to explore a city and to visit those areas that one otherwise wouldn't see. And the 2011 Designers Fair location in Ehrenfeld was in that sense good as it provided a focal point for our
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While critics denounce such as an easy and obvious way to generate content - for us reviewing the past year is an important step in planning our activities for the coming year: where to go, who to talk to, what to sit on and, just as importantly, what to ignore or give up. The only real problem for us is that in preparing such we realise just how much material we haven't had the chance to use - and so receive an impression of how much more material we will acquire in the coming year. Heck!
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