Dutch designer, JURGEN BEY, began his studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven between 1984-1989 and subsequently taught there for six years next to running his own designstudio. Bey soon attracted media attention through his early collaborative projects within the Droog collective such as Treetrunk Bench (1999) and Gardening Bench (1999) – works that catapulted the designer onto the world stage. In 2002 Bey set up ‘Studio Makkink & Bey together with Architect Rianne Makkink.
Bey’s work is often mistakenly aligned with a rigorous environmental agenda due to his interest in using recycled or ‘found’ objects. However, the designer explains that he doesn’t set out to investigate environmentally sensitive solutions through his work. Instead, his interest lies in pursuing a ‘layered’ and conceptual approach to design and discovering delight in the hidden qualities of the world we live within.
Stubborn Chair , 2010
Two stackable chairs placed slightly off center are melted together, enclosed in their outer skin. It is impossible to place these chairs in straight, neat rows. “One never sits on a chair the way it is meant to be used: you sit on it like this, or you could sit on it like that,” Bey says shifting in his chair. “In the end you’ll have a chair that is never right, and that is always right – a very stubborn chair.”
Kade Chair, 2008
The Kade chair is a design object that encourages active sitting. Strong contrasts in colour, material and design between the base and the seat focus attention on the latter, a well-known Eames design. The wooden structure supports the plastic seat wherever balance is required. The design encourages the user to move around in the chair; as Rietveld used to say in defence of his angular designs, “To sit is a verb”
Birdwatch Cabinet Girl, 2006
The birdwatchcabinet is a little sleep maisonnette for a seven year old child. An old table and office-desk form together with their wooden traveling box a research-worker-cabinet. Through sandblasting the traveling box gets a rich finishing.
Gardenhouse, bathstovetable and birdwatchcabinet, are a series of products in which collected old pieces of furniture are combined, in search of new products and functions.
Kokon furniture, 1999
A combination of different chairs and tables have been wrapped in an elastic synthetic fiber. The material shrinks around the different pieces and forms a smooth elastic skin, giving them an entirely new appearance.
By cross-breeding and grafting, products and materials of a different nature can merge and develop into new products.
Tree Trunk Bench, 1998
The woods of Oranienbaum are filled with felled trees scattered around. These trees could serves as giant benches by cross-breeding the trees with a number of different chairs; an interaction between culture and nature. The tree trunk is the seat, the bronze casts of chair backs transform it into a proper piece of furniture.
Read also:
MILAN TRAVEL GUIDE: TOP GALLERIES & MUSEUMS
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Visit the website of Jurgen Bey
