Design Storytelling

More beautiful, clever, exploratory work from Studio Makkink & Bey with the Crate Series.

Love Jurgen and Rianne’s dedication to redefining existing objects. In this case deconstructing the common crate and reconstructing it into a variety of decorative and functional domestic ‘live/work’ designs.

The Crate Series is a strange combination of ready mades and one offs; with second hand objects, found in a Rotterdam antique shop, framed by unique crate structures.

Quoted in Icon Jurgen Bey says: “We understand crates as something to put objects in, but reassembled, they become a way of giving a larger object its surroundings, its own sense of privacy.”

Beautiful, human centred, thought provoking, and made with reused materials = good design for me.

Crate Series at Six Projects

(darn, missed it - finished on Jan 14th)

I’ve fallen in love with… a piece of furniture… again! Dang, this is so beautiful I could cry. Thanks to @Dezeen for highlighting the Gravel Plant 01 by Mieke Meijer.

Oh, I’m such a sucker for Dutch design.

Love the simple materials: recycled oak, steel and glass. Love the complex yet minimalist forms. Love all the idiosyncratic nooks and crannies to store bits and pieces, but fear that putting anything on or in it would only ruin its beauty. Most of all I love the contradiction of this intricately handcrafted piece of furniture telling a story about a heavy industrial structure. Wish there was an image of the original gravel plant that Mieke based her design on, to compare and contrast.

“Restoring disused industrial shapes and placing them into a new context is the concept behind Mieke Meijers latest project, based on industrial archaeology. By reducing scale and playing with volume, Mieke creates autonomous interior objects. `Gravel plant 01` is the first in a future series.”

Oh my words! What fun Wordle is.. here’s a cloud to illustrate my @48HrMag piece on the Dutch Hustle that is Atelier Van Lieshout. It’s so appropriate you would have thought I’d designed it myself. This really is the graphic version of an AVL sculpture: colourful, blob-like and full of crap. I must create Wordles for all my long articles.