Studio visit: DustLab
If things are gathering dust in their studio, it is because the two researchers of DustLab are not afraid of keeping their noses to the grindstone. Just before Alex Gérard and Thomas Pitte open their doors to the trend watchers of Design September, we don our protective goggles for a visit to their laboratory in Molenbeek.
“We certainly wouldn’t have wanted to set up camp anywhere outside Brussels,” says Alex Gérard, one half of the DustLab duo, which is opening its studio to the general public for the first time this month, to display the fruits of its labour. “But it wasn’t easy. It took us six months to find a suitable location. We wanted to start small, so that we wouldn’t be paying excessive amounts for fixed expenses, but at the same time, we needed a certain surface area for our machines and so that we could move things around occasionally. We work both with smaller pieces and with solid wood, so a ground floor location was essential. We saw some really great places, but they were either too expensive or not accessible enough.” Thomas Pitte: “And machines to make classic pieces of furniture make a lot of noise, so you can’t just put them anywhere. There were interesting places, but if you then discover that the space is next door to an accounting office, you know it’s not for you.” [Laughs]
The studio in which DustLab has been making a racket for the past two years is just a stone’s throw from the metro station Zwarte Vijvers/Étangs Noirs in Molenbeek. Gérard: “A blessing! You used to be able to avoid the traffic at certain times of day here, but now there is just chaos all the time. We only ever use the car when we need to replenish our stocks of wood.” That stock – which comes from interior design companies and local carpenters in the neighbourhood – is stored on the ground floor, where we find an enormous quantity of planks, palettes, and tree trucks, as well as the huge combined woodworking machine. Upstairs, the pair has created an adaptable space where finer woodwork can be done on portable machines. That mix is essential to the duo. Pitte: “We are not designers, we were trained as traditional woodworkers, and that is still the foundation that our work is based on. Working with solid wood, pure creation, is still a very important part of what we do.”
That three-year course at the Institut Diderot on Hoogstraat/rue Haute was also where the pair met for the first time and hatched plans to pursue their training in practice. Pitte: “We were actually re-educating ourselves. I used to be a French teacher and Alex worked in electromechanics on building sites. We graduated together in 2008. I enrolled in a further course, traditional carpentry, and two years later Alex and I, as well as a third person who has now left to do something else, founded DustLab. The three of us took part in the Design Développement Durable competition, where we presented three projects: two games and modular shelving made of bamboo.”
One of the projects was Histoires de chutes (“Waste Stories”), a beautifully designed box containing carefully sanded recycled materials for building blocks. Gérard: “We like to reuse whatever we can; to give discarded things a second chance. But we also use new wood for some projects as well because we don’t want to impose too many limitations on our work. We are very conscious about the materials we use.” Pitte: “For something like Histoires de chutes, it would simply have been against the spirit of the project to make the building blocks from scratch. It is a local project that just isn’t suitable for production on a grand scale.”
Indeed, the DustLab technicians’ inspiration is local. Pitte: “We actually created Histoires de chutes very spontaneously: I regularly took leftover wood home for my son to play with. Our children are already so often forced into an established pattern. Histoires de chutes contains no defined forms; the child is completely free. When I saw the beautiful things he would make with the wood – whole towns – it was a revelation. Exactly the same thing happened with the wooden puzzle. And I actually first made the cube stools for my daughter’s birthday party. Life is improvisation!”
DustLab is exactly that kind of organic whole. Pitte: “We are very complementary. Alex sketches more and does IT, while I spend most of my time woodworking. We develop each other’s ideas and then decide whether to take them to the next level. We really just rolled into design. Both sides – design and woodwork – are intimately linked, but we tend to go back to our training.” Gérard: “At the same time, you can’t escape the influence of what is going on in the design world today. That inevitably influences us, as illustrations, comics, and photography also do, three things with which we are currently developing projects. The materials we use have also changed: more panels and less solid wood. That also affects our method, though we do still think solid things are important. Solid wood is a living material.” Pitte: “It also ensures that our training persists. Young designers…well, that stage is unfortunately behind us. [Laughs] But DustLab has not existed for so long, and we still have a lot to learn. Those excursions to illustration and photography are journeys into unknown territory for us, explorations of what is possible. They open new worlds.” Time to make the dust fly!
Borough: Molenbeek
Design September: Open Doors: 20 & 21/9, 11 > 19.00, rue Edmond de Grimberghestraat 22, Molenbeek,
0492-31.89.01 (call to enter), www.designseptember.be
Info: dustlab.be
Photos © Heleen Rodiers
Design September: Open Doors: 20 & 21/9, 11 > 19.00, rue Edmond de Grimberghestraat 22, Molenbeek,
0492-31.89.01 (call to enter), www.designseptember.be
Info: dustlab.be
Photos © Heleen Rodiers
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