Arne Quinze Lecture

An Interview with Belgian designer Arne Quinze.

Recorded a the Design Academy Eindhoven, 23/01/2008

GK: Guy Keulemans
AQ: Arne Quinze

GK: Well, welcome to the Academy, I'm speaking with Arne Quinze, thank you for coming. I guess the first thing that intrigues me about your work is that there is a very strong artistic side to it, as well as a very strong design side. Sometimes the artistic seems stronger, such as in the sculpture you did at the Burning Man festival, but you have also applied that in more a commercial design context with "Cityscape". Do you find that the way you approach a project based on this?

AQ: I think that first of all, design for me began as an experiment when I began 8 or 9 years ago, because before I did a lot of artistic solutions, sculpture and these things, but the experiment worked so well that now there is a whole company around, and production etc etc. And so I love to my art, because in the first place I can experiment; I don't have any rules. It's really to get my emotions a shape. And on the other side I also like design, because there I have rules. I don't like the rules - its always a sort of fight against them. But the first thing and most important thing is that only do things that I like to do.

GK: And with that design process, does it come from sketching and drawing? Or 3D models? How do you start the idea?

AQ: I never studied. I can't work with a computer. For me, computers go too slowly, from my point of view. I have my sketchbook always with me, and I travel so much, and so for me my sketchbooks, I can write in them my ideas and concepts and when I arrive at a company, and the company is like a big carrier, and I am just a small plane in front of the carrier, and I am always flying out, and when I come back I have my ideas. And when I give them to my studio, then they work on it. And for me its also important to have this synergy, because one plus one is three, and then we make it and we have success. So you need to have synergy, not just between you and your client, but within the company as well. I like to create this ***** inside the company, so I give them my sketches and they work on them and I come back and say "I like this, lets build up this".

GK: So would you say you sort of encourage competition amongst your staff?

AQ: Yes, in our own way, we do that, yes.

GK: I notice that on your website, and also in the media, your personal self-image is quite prominent. How important do you think your image is to your success?

AQ: My own image? I think they make my image just how I am. I think that maybe its normal that they write stories about it and they focus on it because, because the normal way is to go to school, to study, and da, da, da, da. and I never worked in this way, I did everything my myself. I was a street kid, and now today I have a studio of 65 people, and the studio is around 10,000 square meters.... Maybe its how we do it, thats maybe so unusual that people want to read about what happens there. And I think also that I take absolutely my own freedom to do really what I want.

GK: Ok, thanks, I think that probably the end of the interview, but I did want to ask one more question because I notice you have a few tattoos, and i have a few too, could you maybe show us your tattoos and explain what they are about?

AQ: No I don't want to do it because I would need to take all my clothes off! I have just one but its more than a square meter.

GK: Ok no worries, and thank you very much.