Jurgen Bey

Jurgen Bey (1965-) is a Dutch designer, particularly known also for his teaching activity. His critical research focuses on the relationship between public and private spaces and between different project scales: one of the cornerstones of his teaching is that product design can be thought only in a broader relationship with architecture and even with urban planning and viceversa, encouraging his students to think of the design process in a continuous “leap between planes” that enriches the creative dimension. Bey is remembered mainly for his teaching activity, which began in 1996 at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (the same institute from which he graduated in 1989) and continued in prestigious universities such as the Royal College of Art and the Sanberg Institute, while his practical creations have always been experiments with a strong conceptual content such as the Tree Trunk bench, distributed by Droog Design, which consists of a simple rough tree trunk into which three backrests have been grafted to allow a seat. In 2002, together with Rianne Makkink (1964-), he founded the studio Makkink & Bey, specialized mainly in curating exhibitions but also active in product design with creations such as the famous Ear Chair, produced by the brand Proff, which prefigured the advent of armchairs with soundproofing function. Another of the few experiments with more structured brands destined for mass production was his collaboration with Moooi from 1999.