This new series, Design bites, unveil the backstage of contemporary creation. Tackling various topics from personal designer processes to the position of Collectible design on the global design market; these bites offer different views to suit all tastes. Today we talk with BRUT Collective.

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COLLECTIBLE: Can you talk about a new piece/collection that you release for COLLECTIBLE SALON.

BRUT: City Remnants is BRUT’s new collective and monumental installation. A third production which - as a shared and co-created context - should be seen as both a continuum of the convergence of our design practices and as a renewed positioning. For although this third edition is primarily a design statement in its own right, it also represents the further development of the possibilities and perspectives of our collective. With the contemporary city as its motif, the installation became an ode to its archetypal forms and functions, but equally an investigation into the relationships between the public and the domestic, between the collective and the individual.

“BRUT challenges thought with design objects as collectible design, without shunning the possibility of serial production.”

C: How did you get into collectible design? Why did you focus your practice on this type of design rather than industrial design?

B: BRUT has dedicated attention for the architectural, sculptural and emotional potential of design. On the one hand, this focus is a result of the personal sensibilities of the participating designers – the corresponding characters of their practices. On the other hand, it creates a common ground and motive; it realizes and defines a shared environment where the designers can show, strengthen and challenge each other. BRUT challenges thought with design objects as collectible design, without shunning the possibility of serial production.

A few lines of our manifest, when we started up Brut-collective 3 years ago, fits very well the question. 

BRUT stands for bold movements and emotions beyond functionality.

BRUT honours the architectural, sculptural and emotional capacities of design.

BRUT aims at creating meaningful objects which allow a strong relationship with the user – a relationship that transcends mere functionality.

C: What have you been up to recently? What are the next projects/exhibitions you wish to highlight?

B: The collective's dedication to materiality, monumentality and interpersonal relationships leads to the introduction of BRUT Depot. A new space for permanent presentation and encounter, situated within the Haptic House in Antwerp, offering the possibility to continuously visualize and access the BRUT creations.

BRUT Depot is open for private viewings from early autumn 2021 on with a first chapter of City Remnants, a third shared production in close collaboration with Antoine Architectural Finishes, with which the collective both continues and updates its path. City Remnants is, as such, a new conceptual and shared setting for the individual works, as well as the launch of a first collaborative collection in which the separate pieces are assigned their own, distinct function.

From then on, BRUT Depot will become a dynamic presentation context in which existing and future BRUT arrangements can appear anew and differently; an ongoing yet fluid exhibition to which the public will be cordially invited at the appropriate times. 

C: Where do you take your inspiration from?

B: For our latest collection - ED3 - City Remnants we took the contemporary city as a motif and were inspired by its archetypal forms and functions. A straight sidewalk gradually making a rounded corner, the gentle undulation of a speed cushion; barriers guiding traffic and a fence that partially allows the gaze to pass through - these are some of the elements which remain when travelling from one city to another. They are the quintessential components of the urban landscape with its materiality of steel and concrete, its qualities of unpolished, forthright surfaces. We chose to borrow these distinctive details, to interpret and transform their volumes.

About BRUT

BRUT is a collective of emerging Belgian designers (Charlotte Jonckheer, Linde Freya Tangelder, Nel Verbeke, Ben Storms, and Bram Vanderbeke) with a dedicated attention for the architectural, sculptural, and emotional potential of design. In close collaboration, they conceive and shape unique, sensitive and conceptual scenographies which contain and emphasise the individual works, while simultaneously  presenting collectively designed functional objects and structures.