Base in Brussels Opens Its Doors For Design September

Base, BaseLab 10/16/08 | Event, Exhibitions

Inside Base’s Brussels studio for Design September’s Open Doors: a faux Arno catches up on leisure reading; faux Pierre considers growing a moustache

The city of Brussels has long been a city with a strong, active design culture. Yet despite its perpetually prolific and varied design community Brussels is often overlooked as a design capital, no doubt due at least in part to the typically modest, understated nature of its residents. But two years ago this all began to change, with the first installment of an annual city-wide program called Design September.

A month-long festival created to celebrate Brussels design ranging from fashion to architecture to food design to window displays, Design September this year included 50 events throughout the month, with some 100 designers presenting their work. With one event series, Open Doors, creators open their studios to the public for a glimpse inside their working process.

Our Brussels studio opened its doors for the event, in conjunction with the other art- and design-related residents of the building. Known informally as “Chapeau 62″, as the building is a former hat factory, the collective includes Base, architectural studio Lhoas & Lhoas (with whom we collaborated on BozarShop), contemporary art gallery Catherine Bastide, and caterer El Camion.

The event took place over the weekend of September 27–28, and because the employees of Base were not working, we printed life-size paper cutouts of the people and arranged them throughout the studio. The studio computers displayed our work on a looping cycle, and for an additional layer of seeming activity, we recorded the normal sounds of the studio—phones ringing, people talking, music playing—as a soundtrack.

Ward takes precautions with hot coffee, and shows our work for Jeff Koons’s show at the Gagosian

The event was sponsored by Duvel, so there was plenty of Belgian beer, as well as an array of tasty morsels provided by El Camion. A ping-pong tournament rounded out the event at Chapeau 62.

Open Doors: oysters, Duvel, and ping pong in the garden of “Chapeau 62″

Also participating in Design September was our type foundry, Base Lab, who gave a 30-second whirlwind tour of their work at this year’s Brussels Pecha Kucha, on September 20. Incidentally, Base Lab also developed a typeface from character specimens found onsite at Chapeau 62 that were remnants from the building’s former life.