Design September fetes unsung heroes of modern life
For proof that the Brussels design scene has officially arrived, look no further than Design September, which this year features designers from every imaginable industry
“Staking our claim”
Over the past decade, this festival has grown with both the capital’s talent pool and its international design reputation. This tin anniversary blowout proves that Design September and the Brussels design scene that it serves have officially arrived.
“Let’s be honest, we’re not Milan,” laughs the event’s co-ordinator Roel Rijssenbeek. “But we’re making solid progress. We have Design September. We have the Belgian Design Awards. We have world-class design academies. We’re definitely staking our claim.”
As far as Design September is concerned, the numbers are convincing. The festival spans an entire month and over 100 venues across Brussels. It encompasses just as many design-related events – from exhibitions to conferences to pop-up stores to studio open houses. Dozens of designers from every industry imaginable are on board.
Artisanal roots
Design September’s appeal is as qualitative as it is quantitative. Participants include a slew of up-and-coming talent as well as some of the most celebrated figures in European design. The guest of honour is award-winning Italian architect and designer Mario Bellini. Among the veteran locals present are Alain Berteau and Xavier Lust.
Design is everywhere, but it’s still difficult to say precisely what it is
These might not be household names to you, but, rest assured, you are intimately familiar with the works on which they are signed. As grandiose as it sounds, design is the better part of our everyday interface with the spaces and objects around us.
Designers, these unsung heroes of modern life, are the professionals tasked with making our gadgets, appliances, furniture, vehicles and living spaces more liveable.
Rijssenbeek admits it’s a slippery category. “Design is everywhere,” he says, “but it’s difficult to say precisely what it is. The easy definition, of course, is that it’s any industrially crafted product. But there’s much more to it than that. It’s functionality. It’s aesthetics.”
Indeed, the designer’s job is to marry form and function in a way that enhances both. The finished products must be more aesthetically appealing and more intuitive to use than the generic model. So, although less glamorous to us, designers are much more influential in our lives than their fine-art counterparts.
Design September celebrates the genre in its contemporary form, of course, but this year, for the first time, it also explores design’s oft-neglected artisanal roots. “In previous years, we focused on the concept on one hand and the finished product on the other,” Rijssenbeek says. “The missing link was the actual physical production of the piece, which often involves generations of accumulated know-how.”
The brand-new arts and crafts Route gives you access to 15 workshops across the city. There you’ll see contemporary craftspeople using pre-modern methods and materials to fashion with their own hands a 21st-century fusion of folk wisdom and modern living – the best of both worlds. Highlights include Elsene wood shop Atelier 365, the Fire and Iron forge in Sint-Gillis and leather workshop Niyona in the city centre.
Applied meet fine arts
All this is just one small slice of the Design September pie. There’s much more besides. The marquee event is a lecture by this year’s guest of honour, Mario Bellini. The work of this famed Milan-based architect and designer spans a half decade and bridges the divide between the applied and fine arts.
Bellini’s elegant, contemporary furniture and fixtures can be seen in private homes and museums alike. New York’s MoMA, for instance, boasts 25 Bellini pieces in its permanent collection.
Flemish designer Xavier Lust also prominently figures on the programme with the major solo exhibition Design Stories. The Brussels-based craftsman has been forging a futurist style of metalworking since the turn of the millennium. His signature style of smooth curves and polished surfaces can be seen in several public installations across Brussels.
These include not just “art projects” but commissioned street furniture and public transport shelters. The exhibition showcases these public commissions and Lust’s commercial work for prestigious design houses around the world, as well as both new and never-before-seen pieces.
The winners of this year’s Commerce Design Brussels contest will also be announced during Design September. Way back in January, some 60 recently launched (or renovated) Brussels businesses entered to be judged by a professional jury on design criteria: architecture, interior and industrial design, innovation and all-around aesthetic appeal.
By the time, the public casts the deciding votes this month, the field will be narrowed down to 10 finalists. One will be crowned the grand prize winner at a cocktail party on 26 September.
The competition was initiated in Montreal in 1995 and has since been exported to several other cities, including Brussels. Design September offers the perfect context to spotlight the final round of this year’s edition. Yesteryear’s laureates are featured on a dedicated Commerce Design circuit all month long.
1-30 September across Brussels
Photos: The Lust Chair by Xavier Lust (top); Blanc Cassé by Damien Gernay (above)
Images courtesy Xavier Lust and Bruno Timmermans
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