11.22.21

Interiors

Tour the Unbelievable 1930s Color-Blocked Fantasy Interior Hiding Inside a Simple Brick Building in Belgium

The modernist pioneer Jozef Schellekens was the public architect of Turnhout, a Belgian town halfway between Antwerp and Eindhoven, where he worked on schools and city halls. But his best-known and greatest work was his own house, a 1935 rectangular brick-and-glass structure whose simplicity belies the expressiveness of its interior, where Schellekens created a colorful world full of bespoke built-in furniture and other functional and decorative details.

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11.10.21

Up and Coming

This Belgian Designer’s Color-Blocked Kitchens Channel the De Stijl Movement

“My first study was the preservation of paintings,” Dries Otten tells us over the phone from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. “But I decided it was too boring — your job is only appreciated when it's invisible!” Since hanging up his white gloves, though, Otten’s work has been impossible to ignore — bright, color-blocked interiors and furniture that set him apart from the neutral-obsessed minimalists that dominate contemporary Belgian design.

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12.21.20

Up and Coming

Meet the Lithuanian Designer Making Anthropomorphic Furniture Inspired by Klee and Miro

Lithuanian-born newcomer Barbora Žilinskaite, who felt so stifled by her highly technical and traditional design education at the Vilnius Academy of Arts that her first collection as a new graduate flew WAY in the opposite direction. In this case, though, it was a good thing — that collection, called Roommates, is bizarre in the most delightful and sophisticated of ways, featuring a foot-shaped table, hand-shaped magazine rack, and face-shaped table inspired in part by the paintings of Paul Klee and Joan Miró.

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07.30.20

Up and Coming

Harvey Bouterse’s New Ceramic Lamp is a Study in Contrasting Textures

It's basically our job here at Sight Unseen to follow the career trajectory of up-and-coming designers, and in our professional capacity, we've come to realize that most ceramicists follow a certain path: First come the smalls, like cups and mugs and plates and vases. The next step is usually lamps — think of Natalie Weinberger's pleated clay shades, Workaday Handmade's listing table lamps, and BZIPPY's pyramid-shaped bases. Today, we're featuring one of the first lamps by Belgium-based Harvey Bouterse.

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04.07.20

Interiors

Inside a Forgotten Gem of 20th-Century Belgian Art Deco

In case you missed it, writer, curator, and Prague-based architectural historian Adam Štěch hosted one of our most popular IG Live talks a few weeks ago on the topic of Belgian 20th-century architecture. Here, he gives us the backstory behind one of our favorite examples from that era — the Queen Elisabeth Foundation by Henry Lacoste.

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05.16.19

Up and Coming

Colored Resin Meets Onyx in a Series of Textured Lamps Inspired by Mexico

In Elements, a colorful collection of imaginative light fixtures by Belgian-based architect Adrian Cruz, crystal resin light bulbs float, seemingly suspended, between resin plates, or balance atop slender pillars; some introduce raw materials like marble and onyx. “For me, the juxtaposition of onyx and resin [explores] the contrast between precious nature and modern man’s creations,” says Cruz.

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02.20.18

Sight Unseen Projects

At Europe’s Newest Design Fair, We’re Presenting New Work by Chen and Kai and Mimi Jung

This winter, we're building on a very exciting trajectory that began with our presence at two Collective Design Fairs in New York, and continued when we presented the work of 13 American studios at the London Design Fair this past fall. From March 8 to 11, Sight Unseen will have a booth at the brand-new Collectible design fair, in Brussels, where we'll showcase new lighting by Chen Chen and Kai Williams and new woven works by Mimi Jung.

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Pieterjan Mattan Tribeca home tour with Hem

02.06.17

At Home With

Disco Balls and Trampolines — A Creative Director At Home in His Epically Fun Tribeca Loft

When PieterJan Mattan moved to New York from Belgium in 2012, he arrived without a single piece of furniture. But the 28-year-old creative director, graphic designer, and digital nomad did have plenty of connections, and by the end of that year, a friend renting a loft in Tribeca had announced he was moving. Mattan jumped at the chance to relocate. “I loved this apartment immediately because it was so quintessentially New York,” Mattan says.

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11.07.16

Sighted

This May Be the Coolest Furniture Collection We’ve Ever Seen

The Vaalbeek Project, new suite of furniture by one of our longtime favorite designers, Tomás Alonso, for the Belgian gallery Victor Hunt, is a teaser for an interior Alonso is working on in Belgium, to be completed next spring. It includes new editions of some older designs — such as that insanely chic, stackable rose and green marble coffee table from 2014 — but each piece feels like an instant classic.

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10.17.16

Fair Report

At the Biennale Interieur Kortrijk 2016

Situated less than two hours by train from both London and Paris — but without the steep costs of either — Belgium is an ideal place to do business, which is probably why the Kortrijk furniture fair has been going strong for 25 years as of this week. Other good reasons: Maniera, Muller Van Severen, Sylvain Willenz, and all the other local creative powerhouses who pitch in to make it interesting.

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02.22.16

Excerpt: Book

A New Book Features the Botanical Decor of Your Dreams

File this one under "why didn't we think of it first?" This fall, Magali Elali and Bart Kiggen of the Belgian online magazine Coffeeklatch — a destination for lovely interviews and photography that's been on our must-read list for years — released a book called Greenterior, which looks at the homes of designers and artists through the lens of their abundant houseplants.

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03.05.15

Sighted

Still Lifes by Belgian Photographer Frederik Vercruysse

Still life photography is having a big week on Sight Unseen — yesterday we featured a pair of stylists who built their reputation on it and are now moving into interiors, and today we're highlighting a photographer who approaches shooting interiors just as though they were still lifes. Belgian-born talent Frederik Vercruysse, in fact, describes his entire body of work as "still life photography in the broadest sense of the word," according to his website, applying the approach not just to interiors but to portraits, fashion shows, and the occasional landscape as well (for clients like Wallpaper magazine, Sophie Buhai, and Muller Van Severen). But then, of course, there are his actual still lifes, which we've decided to focus on here. Shot mostly for magazines, they represent the purest form of his aim "to photograph the subject in its purest form."

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