Made up of a group of emerging designers from Belgium,
BRUT’s six designers include Ben Storms, Bram Vanderbeke, Cédric Etienne, Charlotte Jonckheer, Linde Freya Tangelder, and Nel Verbeke. Each has a strong style of their own—but set on concrete podiums, cushioned by raw black coal at the BRUT Collective exhibition in Milan, presented an even heftier image of new
BRUT Collective’s installation at Isola District during Milan Design Week 2018.
Coal was chosen as a reference both to Belgium’s industrial past, but also the designers’ inclination for the beauty of untreated, primary materials. Among the works was Ben Storms’ InHale—a mighty marble slab in molten black and orange carried by a volume of air wrapped in a metal pillow. Bram Vanderbeke’s Fat Pyramid also featured, made of flat laser cut sheets of aluminium.
Cédric Etienne, who is one half of Studio Corkinho, presented a chocolate-hued armchair made out of compressed burnt cork bark granules. Charlotte Jonckheer’s alabaster white side tables are made from paper composite, while Nel Verbeke’s time instruments attempt to capture the mystery of passing hours—a copper hourglass titled The Sound of Time, and a black disc with copper dish attached called The Relic of Time.
[Images courtesy of the
The post