Finally we start seeing flowers everywhere in the street and on the fields so that’s why we dedicate this post to master florist Thierry Boutemy who just moved and opened a new shop in Brussels next to our favorite bakery Le Saint-Aulay (remember the gayest bakery in town?). Read the rest of this entry »
What happens with an empty suitcase? Option number 1: you’ll throw it somewhere in a dark corner of a room and let it gather some dust. Option number 2: you reinvent it into a multifunctional desirable and stackable design object. That’s exactly what designer Maarten De Ceulaer did for his Design Academy graduation project four years ago. Today he continues ” The Leather Collection” with brand new edition titled “Chest of Suitcases”. Read the rest of this entry »
We discovered VII Sept-Bruxelles through the Nationa(a)l Store, a pop-up project by two Belgian-lovers last year in December. A quirky pineapple-shape handbag caught our eye. What was it? Who was this? It was Sept Bruxelles, the accessory label created by Cécile De Jaegher. Read the rest of this entry »
“Can you hand over my pill box? You’re a doll”. Do these words ring a bell? Grandfathers and grandmothers all over the world use these exact phrases to keep their general health going. We all know these less-then-exiting organizers: cheap-looking, industrial plastic containers who help with the organization, timing and intake of pills. That’s why designer Quentin de Coster reinvented the pill box for an everyday use of medication in a fun and logical way! Read the rest of this entry »
A cabinet of curiosities is an encyclopedic collection in Renaissance Europe of types of objects whose categorial boundaries were yet to be defined. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history, geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, art works and antiquities. Read the rest of this entry »
Modular systems, we love them! That’s why the I Love Belgium team has to talk about ‘Grafting Light‘. Grafting Light is a project by architecture office C.T.A. This office is lead, since 2009, by Nick Ceulemans and Liesbeth Thewissen, who required their experiences in renowned offices such as David Chipperfield, Zaha Hadid and Wiel Arets. Read the rest of this entry »
Design Platform Limburg was so kind to invite the I Love Belgium design editor to judge a bunch of new creative talent for the Toegepast 18 competition. It was here that we discovered the work of Isabel Tesfazhi. We were immediately captured by her graphic knit and art/design proposals. Organic forms, artisan knit knowledge and a passion for tribal culture make the work of Isabel unmistakable fascinating! Read the rest of this entry »
We love SaintPaul, we have few words for it. The color, the prints, the playfullness,… We discovered it in the beginning of I Love Belgium and just like our lil’ blog SaintPaul grew and evolved being sold all over the world, from Paris to Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Jeddah, Berlin, Barcelona, Brussels and more…in shops such as Le Bon Marché and Bergdorf & Goodman. Read the rest of this entry »
Belgian based French designer Julien Renault is an emotional designer. In a world where’s there’s already too much design made just for the sake of it, he’s part of the new generation redefining both the material and technique of everyday products and furniture. After graduating at the ESAD Design & Art School in Reims and ECAL in Lausanne he moved to Brussels to assist Belgian designer Sylvain Willenz while working simultaneously worked for an antique design dealer. Read the rest of this entry »
What do Raf Simons, Catherine Deneuve, Richard Rogers, François Mitterand, The Belgian Royal Family and Valentino have in common? They all have worked together with landscape architect Jaques Wirtz! This contemporary landscape architect became renowned and praised for his sculpture like treatment of hedges. Read the rest of this entry »
Creativity goes hand in hand with innovation. If you add up avant-garde shoe design you’ll get Rombaut, an all-natural men’s footwear concept from Belgian designer Mats Rombaut, who presented his collection between 18th and 25th January in Paris. Read the rest of this entry »
The Christmas and New Year’s Eve period is best know for its bright lights and musical abundance! Yet this winter something with the same elements but with a whole different outcome drew our attention. We’re talking about the work of Them Sculptures. Belgian-Dutch artist duo Tom Dekyvere and Han van der Tol are the masterminds behind light, form and sound projects which they’ve been designing for several European light festivals. Read the rest of this entry »
How do you design a chapel interior for an organisation of autonomous schools anno 2012? This hard task was tackled by design duo Tom Callebaut and Cindy Tirry also know as design office tcct. They handled the chapel space as a metaphor for the way the institute works with people: transforming the internal disorder into an infrastructure which gives peace, happiness and reflection. Read the rest of this entry »
Belgium is in a design state of mind at this very moment. The design biennial Interieur 2012 in the city of Kortrijk is in full course and will go on till next weekend. The ideals that lay behind the establishment of the Interieur Foundation in 1967 were closely related to the motives and ideals behind the student and worker rebellions of the late sixties in France, then in Europe and the US. Read the rest of this entry »
I Love Belgium is all about discovery and when we discovered Kim Mee Hye‘s jewelry line we were immediately mesmerized. So Belgian, so pure, all about understated luxury. Designer Kimy Gringoire Lejeune is a self-taught jewelry designer. Her visual language is hard and soft at the same time, influenced by youth culture (her photography reminds us of Larry Clark’s work) but most of all very poetic and free-spirited. Read the rest of this entry »
Today the I Love Belgium team puts a focus on the design work of newly found collective The Ministry of Mass. David Braeckman and Sander Michiels aim to provide comments, criticism and reflection on our current practices as a producing and consuming culture. This translates into a limited series of objects, produced independent and local or objects that reflect on the diminishing relation between Man and Nature. Read the rest of this entry »
What do you do when the UK’s leading quality newspaper The Guardian asks you to write an article for them about what’s going on in Ghent? You say yes of course! Ghent is hosting the 2012 Guardian Travel Awards and The Guardian’s Travel Editor Gemma Bowes hit up the I Love Belgium team to find out what’s happening in Belgium’s hipster capital. Curious what we wrote about? You can read the full article here, but we’ve decided to list up our picks for The Guardian about the latest openings in Ghent here: Read the rest of this entry »
The I Love Belgium team has big love for Brussels based designer Linda Topic. The one-off a kind bed she designed is still one of our best read articles and we wouldn’t mind having her modular floor covering (made with leftovers from wooden floors and carpets) in our living room. Het latest design is a fabric called Dreamcatcher. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve been following Piëtro and Jan-Jan from the beginning with their pop-up concept Atelier Solarshop. Their selection of vintage pieces and young designers always made our heart beat faster. So when we got the message that they blew up the pop-up concept to install a permanent creative platform for creatives and a gallery for young artists and designers, we immediately had butterflies in our stomachs. Read the rest of this entry »
Ampersand House is a gallery of art and design located in a maison de maître in central Brussels. Owners Kathryn Smith and Ike Udechuku, an Australian-British couple curate the gallery as a constantly evolving living environment mixing vintage, contemporary and prototype work to inspire a dialogue with and between collectors and creatives. The I Love Belgium team discovered this beauty awhile ago. It’s a shame that we didn’t post about it sooner. Read the rest of this entry »
