Special Design Projects

Seaweed as a raw material

These panels are made of residual waste from seaweed cultivation. The material grows in the sea, absorbs CO₂ and needs no toxic binding agents. Something usually not used as a building material thus gains a permanent place in the interior.

The project shows how marine biomass can become a fully fledged, renewable alternative for traditional materials.

Colour from waste

The colours in these tiles come from metal residue in water treatment. Rather than using new pigments, existing waste flows are put to work. Each tile reveals traces of a previous life. The project demonstrates how industrial residue can gain new and unexpected beauty.

Plastic takes shape

Discarded plastic from domestic waste is shredded, melted and pressed into new sheets. The patterns and colours are generated by the mix of original material. Instead of hiding waste, it becomes visible here. As such, usable and recognisable material for daily use is created.

Industry as a resource

Silicastone is made from residual waste in glass and ceramics manufacturing. What remains after industrial processes is recombined to form a strong and compact material. The texture and colour variations give clues to its origins. The project shows how industrial residual waste can be reused in both architecture and the interior.

Surplus stock with a story

These wall tiles from Royal Mosa are dead stock: unused surpluses from manufacturing that were never used. They are still in their original packaging, sometimes with small imperfections such as chips or colour discrepancies.

By using these residual items, materials that would otherwise be lost are repurposed instead. The project shows how overstock can also be integrated in a circular approach.

New colour, old ceramics

Studio Rens reworks existing ceramic tiles by reglazing them by hand, layer by layer. As colour specialists, they give discarded tiles new personality. What was once normal is back in again. The project shows how reuse can also be a beautiful transformation.

Biocomposite with flax

This material combines flax fibres with bio-based resin to form something light but strong. Perfect for intensive use in public spaces. The project shows how natural fibres can be an alternative for fossil materials in the building industry.

Recuperated floor tiles

These ceramic tiles were recovered from the Borgerstein building (1933–1935) and reused with their original colour and patterns. The tiles clearly reveal their history. The project shows how materials from demolition projects can be used again without losing their character.

Wood waste in terrazzo

For these panels, Lieven Goetinck developed a terrazzo-style material with wood chips from in-house waste, including old roof trusses. The combination of craftsmanship and residual material results in a surface with a warm and layered appearance. The project shows how waste becomes a visible part of the design.

Ash as a raw material

These tiles, designed by Formafantasma, are made of volcanic ash from the Etna region. The material is formed from natural processes and used in a new context. The project brings geology and design together, showing sustainable use of raw materials from extreme conditions.

For the lockers in the basement, ONBETAALBAAR begins with a palette of materials that matches the concept from earth to sky. A series of warm, earthy tones runs through the space like a subtle gradient.

The lockers combine diverse materials: smoked cork, recycled veneer, pressed paper, spent grain from beer making, beech and reused stainless steel. Though each material has its own origins and texture, their combination here is harmonious.

The variation in shades and surfaces gives the area rhythm and depth. As well as being functional, the lockers also demonstrate how materials — old and new — gain new meaning when gathered together.

ONBETAALBAAR is a design and production studio in Ghent. The group develops custom-made interiors and objects with reused and circular materials. Kicking off with research and experiments, they connect design, material and use, paying attention to aesthetics, sustainability and the full life cycle of each project.

For the basement, Rikkert Paauw designed a bench using discarded objects from the museum collection. Elements that would otherwise disappear are combined here in a new functional composition.

By displaying rather than concealing existing components, the bench emphasises the quality of the original craftsmanship. Details to which much time and attention were once paid gain new meaning in another object.

The bench portrays Paauw's way of working: collecting, carefully selecting and assembling what is already available. Thus creating an object that not only reuses, but also reveals how much labour, material and history are captured in existing things.

Rikkert Paauw (1982, Soest) is a self-taught Dutch designer, artist and maker, active in Brussels and Senarpont (FR). Since 2006, he has been working with used and local materials. His methods are founded on reuse, improvisation and attention to context, and result in objects and spaces in which material, location and former workmanship remain visible.

For the basement, Studio ThusThat produced a wall of mirrors, emerging from their research 925 on silver and valuation. The mirror is made from recycled silver, originating from discarded objects such as jewellery, cutlery and coins.

During the melting process, all traces of origin disappear. What remains is the actual material, having shed its former significance. The mirror reveals this transformation: what were once different objects are now a single new surface.

Reflection plays a double role here. The wall not only mirrors the visitor, it also questions how value emerges and evolves. With this work, the way materials keep circulating is made tangible — and how their meaning transitions too.

Studio ThusThat is a design duo based in Amsterdam, founded by Kevin Rouff and Paco Böckelmann. Their activity lies on the cutting edge of design, art and science, with a strong focus on material research and industrial processes. They collaborate internationally with academic and industrial partners on new material chains and applications.

For the central sculpture; Studio ThusThat uses copper slag, a stone-like residual product from copper production and copper recycling, originating in Belgium. In their project This is Copper, they teamed up with KU Leuven to investigate how this industrial residual waste can be used as a raw material for new applications.

The sculpture combines copper slag with copper, thus visualising the full story of the material — from raw material to residue. In DING, this research gains a spatial and sensory aspect.

By using these materials in a sculptural sense, our attention shifts from usage to experience. The work invites reflection on the origin of materials and the traces of industrial processes that they bear.

So, what is usually unseen gains new shape and meaning.

Studio ThusThat is a design duo based in Amsterdam, founded by Kevin Rouff and Paco Böckelmann. Their activity lies on the cutting edge of design, art and science, with a strong focus on material research and industrial processes. They collaborate internationally with academic and industrial partners on new material chains and applications.

For the new wing of the museum, Unfold created the monumental work Freeze Frame 82.2: a 3D printed aluminium curtain, seemingly in motion but stilled at one specific moment, frame 82.2, the charged instant just before the opening. On the threshold of the museum it forms a soft, almost permeable border that also acts as an entrance gate: revealing by day, concealing by night. In this way Freeze Frame 82.2 also pictures our own time, a period in movement and transition, in which design is challenged to ask questions and to help give direction to what is to come.

ARTIST STATEMENT

We are standing on the threshold of a new era, in which the familiar ways of living, working and producing make way for more sustainable and more just alternatives, inspired by a more-than-human perspective.

The new wing of Design Museum Gent is not conceived as a place for “more museum”, but as “more-than-museum”: a space for debate, lectures, workshops and small exhibitions that explore a world in transition. Not an archive of historical design solutions, but a place where design happens live: a platform that supports our search for the right questions and for imaginative answers to the most pressing needs of our time.

How do you approach the commission to create a work of art that stands exactly on the threshold of this wing and serves as the main entrance to the renewed museum? How can such an intervention stand for a dynamic period of transition, in which design is challenged to keep questioning and to help shape what is still to come? In his 1967 essay “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage”, the ethnographer Victor Turner examined the structure of rites of passage, the ritual processes in which individuals or communities move from one defined state to another. Central to these is the liminal phase, a concept that builds on the work of the folklorist Arnold van Gennep and derives from the Latin word limen, meaning “threshold”. It is the interval in which old positions have been let go but new ones have not yet been taken up: an “in between” space, where the ordinary order relaxes for a while and several possible futures briefly exist side by side. Turner describes this liminality as a suspension of certainty that makes transformation possible, and identifies in it the potential for communitas: a short-lived collective openness that arises when people stay on that threshold together.

This understanding of liminality resonates strongly with the transition we find ourselves in today. We are standing on the threshold of new times, in limine, neither here nor there, in between, no longer anchored in what was, not yet claimed by what will be. More than any other art form, theatre may be the one that explores this state of ambiguity most fully. The theatre curtain embodies that condition: it conceals or reveals, and works not as a barrier but as a porous membrane through which light, whispers and expectation seep.

Freeze Frame 82.2 began as a computer simulation. Using a physics engine, a digital cloth was set in motion and different behaviours of a curtain were simulated in a wireframe of polygons. One specific moment in this animation caught our attention; rewind, play, freeze frame. Now frozen in motion, the curtain in frame 82.2 takes on a pose as if someone were briefly pulling it aside for a quick look into the hall, a coup d’oeil, moments before the curtain rises. In a coordinated choreography, a robot arm with a welding torch translated this one moment, frame 82.2, layer by layer into an aluminium sculpture. The fleeting logic of the simulation materialises here as a monumental gate of more than four metres high and wide. Every weld line of MX3D’s Wire Arc 3D printing technique holds the dynamic of the intense process that shaped it. In this paused gesture, Freeze Frame 82.2 offers neither a beginning nor an end, but a moment that remains open and embraces its ambiguity. It invites us to linger in this shared in-between space, and to recognise uncertainty not as paralysis but as possibility. As the new wing opens its doors, the work reminds us that the future of design does not lie in fixed answers, but in our willingness to pause, to look again and to step across the threshold together, towards what has not yet been fully imagined.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Material: aluminium 3D print on a load-bearing aluminium structure

3D printing technique: Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) is a form of metal 3D printing in which a metal wire is melted with an electric welding arc and built up layer by layer into a part with the help of a robot arm. WAAM makes it possible to produce parts faster and with far less material loss than traditional production techniques. Freeze Frame 82.2 was 3D printed in 12 separate parts and then assembled by hand.

Weight of the 3D print: 250 kg

Total weight of the gate: 360 kg

Film: Studio Alexandre Humbert

With the support of the Platform Kunst in Opdracht of the Flemish Government

Unfold, founded by Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen, has been exploring the boundary between digital technology and craft culture since 2002. Their autonomous work creates encounters between the virtual and the material, with themes such as craftsmanship, reproduction, authorship, communities and the future of material culture at its centre. From their pioneering ceramic 3D printer and digital potter’s wheel in l’Artisan Électronique to cinematic stories about disappearing crafts and heritage such as Apagada and A Combmaker’s Tale, Unfold builds a poetic but critical investigation into the role of makers in a digital age.

The duo has exhibited internationally in museums and biennials, including the Centre Pompidou, the Vitra Design Museum, the New Museum in New York and the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in Taiwan. Their work is part of leading collections and has been awarded, among others, the Ultima for Architecture & Design and Designer of the Year.

In the museum shop, aluminium structures set the scene. Bram Vanderbeke and Wendy Andreu begin with their Pyramid system, translating it into a series of sculptural elements which add rhythm in the space.

The shapes repeat, move, grow or shrink. They become tables, display cabinets and stands, and guide your glances and movements. What initially seems stark and industrial, turns almost tactile and softer with use and light.

Everything is made of aluminium: light, strong and infinitely useful. The components are cut with precision and finished by hand, giving each structure its own nuance.

With this, the shop is more than a place to display objects — it's an environment in which structure, material and movement come together in an experience.

Bram Vanderbeke (BE) and Wendy Andreu (FR) are designers who regularly work together on material research and spatial interventions. From Ghent and Paris, they develop projects on the cutting edge of design, architecture and sculpture. Their work begins with experiments, translating into objects which connect space, use and material in new ways.

For this project, Grondstudio uses earth as a building material and something meaningful. The room contains a massive loam pillar, mixing local soil and fragments of the existing building. A direct link is thus created between past and present.

The pillar highlights the production process: heavier stones gradually gather at the top, making the structure visible. The work is achieved slowly and precisely, in contrast with the speed of modern building methods.

During its construction, professionals from different domains began talking to one another, sharing their own earth experience. The project therefore lives on as a place of exchange.

The pillar gives the feeling that building with earth is not only a technical choice, but also a cultural and collective practice.

Grondstudio is the workplace of designer Pieter Van Bruyssel in Belgium. He uses earth and natural materials based on principles of vernacular architecture. His projects connect materials, locations and communities, and investigate how traditional building techniques can contribute to contemporary, sustainable and meaningful forms of architecture.

For the reception area, Casimir designed a counter made of solid European oak, construed from his study of the imagery of the furniture item. Based on a philosophy of deconstruction, he reconsiders the piece of furniture, not as something permanent, but as a whole that can be constantly read, re-construed and reassembled.

The form takes shape from a seemingly folded surface: a 2D sheet folded like origami to create a three-dimensional object. The direction of the wood grain follows and emphasises this movement. This results in various zones and levels which contain the activities and reception.

The lightness of the folds contrasts with the solidity of the material. By working with solid oak, a piece of furniture is created that is durable and develops a rich patina with use.

The counter thus becomes a layered object, in which craftsmanship, material and imagery are combined and leave room for interpretation.

Casimir is a Belgian furniture maker and designer with activities going back more than thirty years. He works exclusively with solid European oak and founds his design method on deconstruction. In his studio, he designs furniture in which craftsmanship, imagery and material are combined, ignoring trends and paying attention to sustainability and time.

In the historic heart of Ghent, within the walls of Design Museum Gent, a desolate stone yard has been transformed into an intimate inner courtyard. The three high façades create plenty of shade,

climatically resembling a forest fringe, in which trees grow tightly together in their competition for light.

From façade to façade, a root-friendly layer in tree soil has been provided. Here, the selected trees are already growing side by side in a circular space left in the centre. The surrounding semi-solid surface is permeable, allowing rainwater to filter in and remain available for the vegetation.

In a process of evapotranspiration, the trees return water to the air, providing local cooling. The project therefore responds to climate challenges in the built-up city centre: the heat island is transformed into a cooling forest.

The space around the vegetation allows for movement, relaxation and usage. The sterile yard has become a living microclimate attracting plants, animals and people.

Bas Smets is a Belgian landscape architect and founder of Bureau Bas Smets. His work develops new urban ecologies which generate microclimates and make cities more resilient. He combines design, science and research in international projects, and teams up with scientists and artists in creating innovative landscapes which respond to climate change and urban transformation.

Rikkert Paauw designed a large table that can be separated into smaller tables. The work is construed of elements made from discarded furniture from the museum collection, with additional materials from his own depot, plus new components where necessary.

When combined, they form a central table; individually, the components can be used as independent brasserie tables. Connections and divides remain visible, leaving signs of the fluctuating construction.

The table highlights Paauw's interest in modularity and improvisation. The work shows that you can make a new arrangement with what you have: not smooth or perfect, but lively, functional and charismatic.

Rikkert Paauw (1982, Soest) is a self-taught Dutch designer, artist and maker, active in Brussels and Senarpont (FR). Since 2006, he has been working with used and local materials. His methods are founded on reuse, improvisation and attention to context, and result in objects and spaces in which material, location and former workmanship remain visible.

Inspired by natural textures and motifs, BOTANICAL PLANTER 01 explores the dialogue between organic and synthetic matter, as well as between a living organism and the museum that makes room for it.

The planter accommodates a plant whose growth challenges the museum’s traditional role as a space for preservation. The plant grows around and into the vessel, responds to environmental conditions, changes with the seasons, and may eventually decay. It also requires care, making watering and maintenance part of the work itself. Ceramic and epoxy resin, worked through processes inspired by geological erosion and oxidation, extend beyond utility.

By introducing temporality, dependency, and unpredictability into the museum, BOTANICAL PLANTER 01 opens up an ongoing exchange between the plant, the space, and those who care for it. In doing so, it contributes to a shared ecosystem shaped by both human and non-human life.

* This piece was commissioned for the new wing of Design Museum Gent as part of the partnership with ATHENA! Clay Fair, an annual project by 019, Elke Vanlerberghe (LERRY ceramics), and Design Museum Gent.

Gent Waste Brick is a low-carbon facing brick that is used for the new museum wing of Design Museum Gent. The brick is made of lime, sand, white cement and 63% raw materials derived from residual waste streams from Ghent, i.e. broken concrete and crushed construction glass. It has only one-third of the embodied carbon of a typical clay-fired brick. It is a unique white facing brick with a special texture, product of a “clean” production that does not involve a kiln. After extensive research, the design team decided to use pressed rather than fired bricks because of their lower carbon impact. In production, raw materials are mixed, after which the bricks are pressed, hardened and dried.

The brick is the result of an effective collaboration between numerous partners: the architects ATAMA and Carmody Groarke, the supervising building consultant sogent, the research team of Local Works Studio, BC materials as producer, and Design Museum Gent. Thanks to a subsidy from Circular Flanders/Public Waste Agency of Flanders (OVAM) and with the support of the City of Ghent via sogent, we were able to launch a study. The prevalent laws and the necessary certification made it a complex process. It shows that you are stronger together and that, as a government, you can truly commit to a circular economy and pursue innovation.

Produced by BC materials for Design Museum Gent and sogent

Dimensions: 23 x 11 x 5.5 cm

Material: broken concrete, crushed construction glass, lime, limestone flour, Lommel quartz sand, white cement

Production: spring 2024 at Het Arsenaal, Ghent

For the reading room, Chevalier Masson developed a textile intervention that shapes the space without setting it in stone. Partition is made of stair carpet from existing stock, which is arranged and joined by hand to create a flexible, double-sided finish.

The structure can open or close and adapts to different situations — from readings to gatherings. The tight woollen structure and the jute and linen backing absorb noise and add a tactile touch.

The warm colours allude to humanity and make the area inviting and soft. Here, within the concept from earth to sky the focus shifts to a more sensory and embracing experience, in which textiles act as a direct, physically readable language.

As such, the installation creates a welcoming place to read, listen and get together.

Chevalier Masson refers to the Brussels duo Eric Chevalier and Anne Masson. As textile designers, they have spent more than twenty years studying the relationship between material, space and usage. Their work wanders between intimate and collective contexts, and translates textiles into spatial interventions that combine sensory and social experiences.

Covers designed by Manoeuvre vzw and students from KASK, La Cambre and LUCA | School of Arts

Second-hand batch of Catifa 46 chairs, sponsored by Liebaert Textiles.

Tables and grid Open Structures

ONBETAALBAAR uses the principle assemble to disassemble and the custom finishes of OpenStructures to make the Atelier. A basic wooden structure forms the starting point on which cabinets and elements are placed, adapted and reassembled.

The cabinets are construed as open systems which can transition to suit the museum's activities. Top and bottom structures alternate between closed and open, while rotating drawers and sliding panels allow interaction and flexibility.

The makers' and materials cabinet is both an object and a medium. Made of circular materials, it is itself a set of samples, while also presenting further materials that can be shown, moved around and used. With this, a place for discovery, comparison and collaboration emerges.

As such, the zone is a workplace in motion — where materials, functions and arrangements can keep changing.

ONBETAALBAAR is a design and production studio in Ghent. The group develops custom-made interiors and objects with reused and circular materials. Kicking off with research and experiments, they connect design, material and use, paying attention to aesthetics, sustainability and the full life cycle of each project.

After you left, they took it apart brings ceramic and metal into a dialogue shaped by the museum’s transformation. The bench draws on the construction site of the museum’s renovation, including the restoration of its existing buildings and the construction of its new wing. It incorporates demolition remnants—crushed concrete, brick, reclaimed glass, and ash from some of building’s former wooden elements—transforming construction waste into a new material language.

Its textures, colours, and forms draw on the stratified traces revealed during the works, while subtle painterly qualities echo the ageing tapestries housed within the museum. The metal component follows the contours of the wall in transition, capturing traces and accidental marks observed during surface restoration.

Embodying circularity and reuse, the piece connects the museum’s renewal with the layered history of its site, reconstituting remnants of the past into a new form for the future.

* This piece was commissioned for the new wing of Design Museum Gent as part of the partnership with ATHENA! Clay Fair, an annual project by 019, Elke Vanlerberghe (LERRY ceramics), and Design Museum Gent.