Studio Visit: Maarten De Ceulaer

“I like it when a design is more than a fine chair or a fine table made from fine materials. That’s nice too, but I can’t do that: just design a nice chair. I want to create chairs that refer to cell organisms or viruses and bacteria, for example, or a cupboard that makes you daydream; that whisks you away to the distant lands you might once have visited. Or when people look at that tree trunk with green leather strips around it I made for Fendi, I hope they see the strips as a kind of moss growing on fallen tree trunks in the woods. I try to include a poetic touch like that in all my designs.” The recent winner of the Henry Van de Velde Award for Young Talent 2012, Maarten De Ceulaer (1983), creates designs that stimulate the imagination. He aims to tell stories and move people. His work is imaginative, colourful, varied, and original, and reveals a kind of organic heart. It is design with an evocative soul and mature imagination, which does not stop breathing once it is created. Like, for example, his chairs in the Mutation Series, which appear to be subject to continual growth. “For a long time, I had been fascinated by photos of microscopic viruses, bacteria, and cell structures, and how cells divide and multiply. I wanted to make furniture that really looked like it was made of a bunch of cells that could still separate. As though your hassock might grow into a sofa over time. Surfing the internet, I found pictures of very old, blobby looking mosses that grow in the Andes. Those forms gave new direction to the project.”

Maarten De Ceulaer is inspired by many things, but rarely by design, and that is a conscious choice. “I look at design much less than I used to because it is often counterproductive. It leaves me thinking: ‘oh, he’s already done that’ or ‘that is very similar to what I’m making at the moment’. I find it much more inspiring to look at art, architecture, things you see on the street, in nature, or in films and documentaries.”

The young man from Diest studied Interior Design at Sint-Lukas in Brussels for four years, and then went to study at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, where he really found what he was looking for. “Absolutely. It is a great asset to graduate in Eindhoven, at such a highly respected institution. It is a very good school that is also particularly good at PR. Their graduation show coincides with the Dutch Design Week, which is a huge event, and the school invites the press from across the world. One day you’re a student, and the next you’ve graduated and you’re explaining your designs to journalists from Mexico, Russia, and America. Within the week, your work is on all the blogs and a bit later, you’re in all the design magazines. That is, of course, if your work appeals to them.”

(Maarten De Ceulaer for Fendi, Transformations © Paul Clemence)

And it certainly does appeal. One of Maarten De Ceulaer’s graduation projects, A Pile of Suitcases, was immediately picked up by Gallery Nilufar in Milan, who asked him to develop a whole collection. And as Belgian Young Designer of the Year 2007, he got to present his work at shows in London, New York, and Milan. “I had just graduated, and the first thing I did was to travel across Asia for six months. When I got back, I immediately had to start preparing for those shows. I simply didn’t have a choice. I just sort of rolled into it.” For the past four years, he has had his own design studio, and last autumn he presented a design for the prestigious Italian fashion house Fendi at Design Miami. “The most difficult project I ever did! They gave me carte blanche to do something with their brand identity, which is great, but also very difficult: anything is possible. Also the deadline and the weight of such a major show and of such a major client were very demanding. Fendi are famous for their use of leather, for their colourfulness, for the combinations of materials, and especially for the inspiration they get from modernist graphics, graphic patterns, and motifs from Bauhaus, De Stijl, Art Deco, etc. Those patterns inspired me, but they were all two-dimensional. So I decided to think of a way to make those two-dimensional patterns three-dimensional. And what could be more useful than a strip you leave to creep and grow all over things, so that you can cover whatever you like.”

His project for Fendi and A Pile of Suitcases – literally a suitcase cupboard – as well as his second graduation project, Nomad Light Molecule, all reveal the various parts of the whole in a surprising way. The designs generate a third dimension that makes fascinating form fuse with equally exciting content. “I think I use a lot of systems in my work; very often I think of a system and then use it to make a design. I find it easier. Take the Nomad Light Molecule, for example, which I have picked up again. I am now making it as a system that allows me to create any form whatsoever for my customers, so I can always offer them a unique piece. So when, for example, a customer asks: ‘Make me a molecule that is 70 by 50 by 40 with three legs and one long upward tentacle’, that is perfectly possible. I like thinking up systems that can be used in a myriad of different ways. I don’t like things that are fixed or that are too determined; when something is finished and you can’t do anything with it anymore. I like my designs to be dynamic and flexible.”

That means that Maarten De Ceulaer relinquishes some of his control, in favour of unique, surprising, lively designs. “Exactly, that what’s so fun about it. You set a few parameters and then you make variations. Like my Balloon Bowls, for example. They’re made using another system or production technique in which a first balloon becomes the outer mould for plaster mixed with food colouring, and a second balloon forms the inside curve of the bowl. Every finished product comes out unique. Obviously, you know beforehand that it will be round – that it will be bowl-shaped – and you can partly influence what it will look like, for example by pouring water into the first balloon for more weight, or by blowing air between the two balloons for a flat edge. So you can direct the process in a way, but you never know exactly how it will turn out.”
To Maarten De Ceulaer, design is a matter of a lot of trial and error. In a word, experimentation: “Often, it is a process that requires a very long time, and progresses very gradually. And you often get stuck and have to leave a project for a while and come back to it later. On the other hand, things sometimes develop extremely fast.”

After his studies in Eindhoven, Maarten De Ceulaer decided to move back to Brussels. On the fourth floor of the old bottlery of the former Bellevue Brewery, he shares an enormous open space and a series of eight separate, wooden desk constructions with seven other people: designers, photographers, and an architect. Their creative platform is called Studio With a View, and it is no lie. The amazing view of Brussels has an industrious counterpart inside. Ideas, experiments, and designs constantly bounce off the walls here. When asked whether the community character of the office has an effect on his work, Maarten De Ceulaer says: “I think so, subconsciously. You watch other people experimenting and working with completely different materials. That ensures a great vibe and dynamism. And it motivates me to get out of bed in the morning to come to work. [Laughs] Yes, I think we all motivate one another to keep busy.”

And why Brussels again after Eindhoven? “Because I really enjoy living here. This is the only real city in Belgium, and I’m surrounded by great people here. Eindhoven was an amazing experience as far as design was concerned, and I met a lot of really nice people there, but I wouldn’t be able to live there. It’s a very small, artificial town. Brussels, on the other hand, has an ancient soul.” We could have guessed: a city brimming with stories for a storyteller with a passion for design!

Borough: Molenbeek
Studio: www.studiowithaview.be
Exhibition: > 2/3, Henry van de Velde Awards & Labels, De Loketten/Les Guichets – Vlaams Parlement
Info : www.maartendeceulaer.com

Photos © Heleen Rodiers