Arne Quinze Editorial

EDITORIAL 1

Arne Quinze got his education from the street, as he himself likes to put it. Never having gone to school to receive formal education, he incorporates the things he likes into his work.

Arne Quinze started out as an artist, making abstract paintings. His love for cars and speed is clearly to be seen in his work, visualized in many stripes. He also loves music, admitting to not being able to work without it. Being a father of four children, he tells how they all go to sleep with music still playing.

His big breakthrough came with the square gray pouf, which made a big sensation and still sells very well today. Arne says that he came accidentally into design, but since it does so well he set up a big studio comprising 60 + people. He likes to describe the way the studio works with the following image: he travels all over the world and gets all these ideas and then he comes back to the crew and they figure out how to get it done. In this way everyone is involved in the creation process.

The importance of teamwork is also clearly to be seen in his large wooden sculptures. Made of millions of pieces of wood, these huge structures are put together by a large team of people.

His latest enterprise is opening his own gallery, in which a collection of all of his work can be seen, from paintings, to sculptures, to furniture. It’s the Arne Quize world.

Arne Quinze seems to be at ease in all of these different fields, always trusting and allowing his intuition guide him.

Joana Meroz


EDITORIAL 2


On the 23rd January 2008, the Design Academy Eindhoven invited Arne Quinze to lecture as part of the Masters Source lecture program.

Arne Quinze is a very unique designer in that since about 1999 has been incredibly prolific in the disciplines of furniture, interiors, sculpture and graphics, yet without any formal training or design schooling. It’s a fact that comes up a lot when reading about Arne Quinze in the media and it seems a very important part of his identity and the way he represents himself. He uses it as a way to distinguish himself from other designers and as a catalyst for ‘speed’ in design.

1999 was the year Arne Quinze broke onto the international design scene with his popular Pouf chair. Prior to that he had led a life on the streets as a graffiti artist, whichh led to designing interiors for his friends. This playful, almost rebellious, nature pervades his work. It’s daring, stylish and a little over the top – but something to make you admire and occasionally gasp - as happens with his spectacular wooden constructions he made for Burning Man and Brussels. He discussed this approach during the lecture, and repeated it during the question time with student afterwards. The message was “why hold yourself back? You can break through any barrier”. Such an attitude explains the volume of his output and was an inspirational message that reportedly left one member of the audience in tears.

However, the speed at which he works can make some of the projects seem frivolous or ill-concieved. Without reason perhaps? This does not seem to bother Arne Quinze much because he jumps from one project to the next so quickly. But I wondered a few times during the lecture if he was not so much as designer, but more of a stylist. And of course, style is important, but where was the focus on the bigger picture of sustainability, or social context? Its not that every designer HAS to address these bigger issues; I believe in freedom and the choice a designer can make to focus on what interests them. But as a design student we are taught to question everything as a way to make socially relevant design. Arne Quinze, never studied, as he often tells us. The next question must be; is our design education holding us back?


Guy Keulemans