Severen, Maarten van

Maarten van Severen is a Belgian designer of international stature. He grew up in a creative family and developed into a furniture designer and interior designer. He designed for Vitra, Kartell, and Pastoe, among others. Maarten van Severen was born in 1956 in Ghent with a father as an abstract working painter and a brother as a designer. He studied Architecture in Ghent and in 1987 he started designing furniture. At the basis of his work is the research into the optimal summation of unity of form, material, and production. Maarten van Severen entered into repeated collaborations with the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. This resulted in beautiful collaborations for, among others, the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, Dall'Alva in Paris, and the Casa da Música in Porto.