Design

The exhibition SERIAL EATER at CID Grand-Hornu dissects thirty years of experimentation with, and reflection on, the ‘object’ of food. The analysis of Food Design, from its development in the 1990s to its implications today, makes it possible to understand changes in consumption habits and awareness of the ‘food system’.

What type of consumers are we, how do we assess our impact in today’s system and what do we accept on our plates?

Bilingual edition: French/English

Dirk Wynants (°1964) is the founder and owner of the innovative Belgian furniture brand Extremis. He is also the main designer of the brand and the creator of the brilliant branding concept “Tools for Togetherness”.

Silversmiths Rob and Jaap Thalen, who enjoy an even greater reputation in the United States if possible than in Europe, are now ready for their second book.

Unconstrained, poetic and timeless. That is how we can characterise the designs of Jean-François D’Or. The Belgian Designer of the Year 2013 does not put himself in the spotlight with large showpieces, but with his special talent he leaves his own mark on the field of smaller home and interior accessories such as bowls, lamps, vases, coat racks, door handles, mirrors,… Small touches that in all subtlety colour an interior and at the same time very ‘democratic’ design that can seduce a large public.

Vision was designed in 1986 by Pierre Mazairac and Karel Boonzaaijer based on the philosophy that a cabinet, as a composition, should be part of the architecture. Partly due to its maximum flexibility of use and extremely modest design, this design was very successful from the outset with the Dutch manufacturer Pastoe. 25 years later, the compositional possibilities remain unlimited: from a three-dimensional relief to a graphic grid of lines and planes, from a series of sideboards to an architectural landscape of volumes. The book Vision – Room for imagination sketches the story of this young classic.

The work of self-proclaimed ex-designer Martí Guixé (°1964) can aptly be described as ‘beyond design’. Creating new objects he finds rather ‘superfluous’ and ‘boring’; he prefers to concentrate on ideas, systems and living matter such as food and human behaviour. As a ‘global designer’, Guixé constantly travels back and forth between Berlin and his native Barcelona, analyses situations, rituals and movements and proposes radical solutions with a minimum of ergonomics – simple, immaterial, humorous and often iconoclastic.

Surrealism may be best known as a movement within literature and the fine arts, but the influence of this 20th-century artistic movement in other fields should not be underestimated. Even the world of design and contemporary design does not escape a healthy dose of surreal humour.

In 2008, Design Flanders is organising the Triennial of Design for the fifth time, a prestigious exhibition in the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, which puts Flemish design in the limelight on the basis of a chosen theme.