Vincent Van Duysen

MERGING DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE

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I have always felt uncomfortable with the words design or designer. Maybe it’s because I’m an architect and I see things in a wider perspective. For some years I’ve been battling with design, which nowadays in reality is serial production, often tainted by mediocrity. In the past, there was a certain integrity but that’s gone. Design is now bracketed with fashion, where the first thought is how to increase its consumer rate, which I find very annoying. Ever since the beginning of my career – 30 years ago – the most important thing has always been to consider architecture as a profession dedicated to humanity; and that means starting from the architecture of places, whose inhabitants need to feel protected and relaxed, right through to the furniture and the objects around them that are necessary for them to live a comfortable and happy life. Furthermore, I think technology today is over-inflated: it shouldn’t prevail over creation. Otherwise everything is boiled down to soulless machines that have no spirituality, no human touch. These days, technology often seems to determine the reason for designing a chair, an armchair or a bed. In 1985, after finishing my studies, I worked first with decorators in my home country, and later with interior architects in Milan. At the age of 24, I collaborated with Jean-Jacques Hervy in Brussels, and then with Jean De Meulder in Antwerp. It’s shameful to think that there are young architects who, at 23, start building houses when they don’t yet even know what life is about. For me it was important to understand how people live in their homes, to somehow discover an art of living, so that I could mould it, later on, into my works.