about

My biggest aspiration is starting my own service design company. I have an amazing fascination and interest for systems in every kind and can’t wait to use this in helping people, companies and governments sorting out problems and providing them with alternative ideas on how to think about the problems they are facing.

Next to this designing and hosting workshops addressing subjects like creative thinking and introducing service design in BA education. I am convinced that education today needs to be redesigned towards an attitude that learns people to think instead of just following the rules.

I try to apply this thinking into some projects. One of them is the project ‘Flexible ceramics’ that is the first working alternative on slip casting of ceramics. An other project is about medical applications of a material that is soft but can change shape to support and or hold a person, or even pressure the body to relax.

On all these projects you will soon find updates on the news page of this web site.

Me on my way to be a ...

I started thinking about design when I chose graphic design for my diploma in 1997. After four years of that I figured out that working in 3D was what I liked most, did my degree in product design in Arnhem (NL) and followed this up with a masters at the Royal College of Art. Now 10 years later I’m starting to figure where I stand and what it means being a designer.

From the moment I started my BA I loved design, and hated it at the same time. The question ‘Why’ was and is my greatest help but also my greatest enemy. During my BA I figured that I cannot just make things, there must be a reason, an explanation, and preferably a socially related question. Although material experimentation is a big part of my work the context, and why I work on a project always has to do with a social happening. I react to what I see, hear and feel. At home and on the street, sometimes supporting and solving problems, sometimes commenting and taking a stand. Design in my eyes is a service that has to find its position in our society. And a designer is a person that has the ability to think about objects, materials, situations and systems from a different perspective to ask the right questions solve or to provoke. To offer a solution in any possible way.

A nice quote of an approach that almost always brings you where you want to go with charm, risk and appealingly randomness is one of Zaphod Beeblebrox from Douglas Adams, ‘Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy’:

‘I don’t know what I’m looking for.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because … because … I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn’t be able to look for them.’

Ultimately I would like to have a great network of people around me all doing their own thing. Designers, scientists working in all kinds of disciplines working together on projects using each others expertise. They are all creative and have a great interest and understanding in social issues and everything relating to people, how they live, work, do things and don’t do things.