Box inside a Box inside a Box...19. Nov2012
"These boxes are made of a single piece of wood. By sawing off a slice around the wood each time and then shaping the slices and gluing them back together, you can make quite a few boxes with the only material loss being the saw-cuts. Creating something without material loss or, alternatively, from waste is one of my strongest drives. This originates from a profound love and respect for materials in general. In a sense, this is not really a unique trait, considering the fact that the material is the most important element of any design. It was a pleasant surprise when nature returned the favour to us, so to speak: the boxes are made in such a way that it is as if you are looking inside the tree trunk and can see how it grew, including a branch that runs all the way into the heart of the tree." - Piet Hein Eek
"To better understand what it is exactly that we are doing, it is perhaps best to take a look back in time. The intuitive decisions we made in the past have turned out to be crucial for the development of the company and for me personally as a designer.In my exam, I wrote that, if you want to function successfully and design beautiful objects, you need to make sure that your environment is a stimulating one and that you feel like a fish in water. So creating this type of environment, your daily reality, is much more important than setting all kinds of goals for the future. We started by creating a fishbowl with our own plants, stones and fish, and have since moved up to an aquarium. Although a little hideaway retreat, where a writer can write in peace and be content, is equally as - or perhaps even more - enviable. To us, the size of the company is not a goal in itself, but an incidental result of how we like to work.
Instead of working purely as a designer, we began producing, distributing and even selling our own products. Crucial for this decision was that both Nob and I actually enjoy being busy with so many different activities at the same time and learning to master them all. Designing alone has never been a dream. So instead of specializing and bringing in or buying all kinds of different competencies, we have opted to do everything ourselves. The products I have created have repeatedly been in keeping with the technical and financial possibilities. We've almost literally grown along with our britches. The company and possibilities have continued to grow through the years, ultimately resulting in our relocation into a building more than 10,000 square metres in size, where all kinds of different activities are brought together under one roof. The workshops (wood, steel, upholstery, assembly, spraying and ceramics) form the beating heart of the building. They are surrounded by the offices, showroom, shop, gallery, restaurant, storage and packing, studios that we rent out and even an event room. So we continue – perhaps even more so than before – to do everything in one place and in our own unique way." Eek en Ruijgrok B.V. and Piet Hein Eek
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