PARIS.- On Thursday 19 October 2017, PIASA whill host Contemporary Design for a landmark sale of creations by the Dutch architect/designer duo Studio Makkink & Bey. The sale features around sixty prototypes, artists proofs and one-offs, chosen from among the Studio's most innovative and museum works.

BEYOND DESIGN – RETHINKING THE OBJECT
Since 2002 the architect/designer duo formed by Rianne Makkink (born 1964) and Jurgen Bey (born 1965) have been striving to reinterpret space and lifestyle. The Studio – based in Rotterdam and Noordoostpolder – covers Design, architecture, landscape design and exhibition concepts. Supported by a various design team, its research highlights the links between objects and their users.

In more than 400 projects, commissioned by museums, galleries, art or government organizations, companies and private commissioners, as well as in many lectures they believe in a design vision in which the form of a design follows from its context. The Studio's creations are present in the Design collections of several Dutch museums, including Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Utrecht's Centraal Museum, the Pompidou Centre, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Studio had several (inter)national prizes and awards for their work.

“Urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture are inextricably bound to product design. The light bulb has had an influence on architecture, the way a house is built influences its interior, a skyscraper could have never existed without the invention of the elevator.” explains the Studio Makkink & Bey

This socially engaged approach calls into question existing structures and the status quo in favour of new social models. By focusing on how large-scale projects often lead to changes in how we view certain products, Studio Makkink & Bey set out to combine architecture, urban design and product conception. They have worked with numerous high-profile partners, notably Vitra, Droog Design, Hermès and Jean-Paul Gautier.

STUDIO MAKKINK & BEY: AN INFLUENTIAL TEAM
Since 2010 Jurgen Bey has taught at London's Royal College of Art and is the director the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Rianne Makkink is a former architecture professor at the University of Ghent, and teaches in various institutions including Design Academy Eindhoven. Both directors are heavily involved in education to pass on their design strategy of expanding the role of the designer to the most strategic function possible. In their opinion connecting existing elements inside the context of a project, is like stringing beads.

Over the last three decades they have established themselves as one of the most influential international designer duos in the world: their Tree Trunk Bench, Kokon furniture and famous Ear-Chairs have become global Design references.

Rianne Makkink & Jurgen Bey are known as critical designers, driven to understand the world and to question it in a unique manner. To this end, their design team analyses content in search of the relation between objects and their users through composing narratives to find connections. The Studio is extremely interested in the future of the new working landscape, they introduced a new on line magazine; Proofflabmagazine, that aims to define the future working culture. They also are involved in the role and importance of a Design Archive in the Netherlands, which they introduced at the Design Biennale in London 2016.