CERAMIC MONUMENTS

Kassidy Miller: There’s a clear through line of domesticity in your work, from your photographic survey of Belgian residential interiors for the 2014 Venice Biennale to private houses, hospitality spaces, and now objects for the home. How have these larger spatial projects informed your approach to designing at a more intimate scale?

Bernard Dubois: I like to design objects that I would personally want to live with, placing a strong emphasis on shape, form, materiality, and texture. It’s a formal and abstract exercise, but also a reflection on what I think contemporary architecture and interiors should be: where design is going right now, where I want to position myself within that, what I think is missing, and what I would like to add. That requires something intuitive and personal.

It’s like hearing a new song, encountering a new object, or even seeing a new car: it doesn’t exist for you yet, but there’s already something familiar about it. I find design most interesting when it moves beyond that familiarity — not simply reproducing codes we already know people like, but playing with history and recognition in order to create something new. In my work, I often draw on a range of 20th-century references — Modernism, Postmodernism, Viennese Secession, Art Deco, even fun 90s stuff. When you bring those references somewhere else, and twist the materiality or scale, you create ambiguity.

You move across many scales — from industrial design and furniture to interiors and architecture. How does your process change when you scale down to a handheld object?

In the studio, we work almost the same way across different scales. When we work on a 3D model, everything appears at the same scale on the screen — whether it’s big or small, it starts with shape. Of course, if the scale is very large, the program becomes much more complex than with a vase. With architecture, a project always exists within a specific context, which plays a major role in defining its function, form, and meaning. The same is true of interiors: an object or intervention is shaped by the environment around it. It can become more precious, more brutal, more abstract, or more decorative depending on its surroundings. A small object, like a chair or a vase, doesn’t have that same local context. Its context is more direct: it refers to the history of architecture and design.

Let’s talk about the new Kasu Collection. You first worked with these four geometries in a set of vases produced with Casa International for PIN–UP’s OFFSITE installation in 2016. What made you return to these forms now?

I wanted to further develop their materiality. The first time we made them, they were very abstract — just shapes, small architectures inspired by Belgian water tanks. A vase is more or less a water tank at a smaller scale, but not exactly. A water tower usually has a structure, with the water held on top, whereas in a vase, the water occupies the full depth of the object. You need that depth for the flowers to hold and stand upright. I also loved the container Daniel Libeskind designed for Alessi in 2019 — a literal model of a water tank, with a little structure and a round thing on top — which I find very cute and interesting. I wanted these vases to feel like models of architecture. For them to really read as small buildings, they needed more texture and detail than the original vases. Buildings always have textures, repetitions, and material qualities.

Why do you think vases lend themselves particularly well to these architectural forms?

Some objects, like chairs for example, have a very precise functionality. They come with constraints: you need to sit at a certain height, the back and armrests have to be at certain heights, the chair has to be safe, and it has to be light enough for people to move. But vases can refer to architecture in a more direct, or in a more abstract way. You can scale a vase up and it becomes a building — except there are no windows. But many of the most beautiful buildings don’t have windows, actually. Archive buildings, for example, can really play with texture.

The first PIN–UP collection was made in wood. What changed when you translated these forms into ceramic?

Ceramic shrinks when it’s fired; it loses about 10 percent of its size. Even when you try to be precise, the whole process becomes slightly artisanal and handmade. That’s the charming thing about it. It leaves more room for imprecision than wood. It also feels closer to excavation, or to materials like concrete and brick, because it comes from the earth.

The name Kasu carries multiple associations: it relates to the Aramaic word for “cup” or “vessel,” while in Japanese it can mean “dregs,” “residue,” or “waste.” What interested you about the name holding those meanings together?

I mean, they literally are vessels, but they also have this ancient feeling. They seem like something out of history — something extremely precious when you find it, but that may once have been thrown away. As if it had broken, and then layers of earth accumulated over it. We wanted these vases to appear as though they came from an ancient civilization — like a Roman amphora, or something out of Mesopotamia — unearthed and rediscovered. That’s why we presented them the way we did at the fair in Copenhagen. We liked the idea of discovering them.

That idea also comes through in the surface treatment of the vases. How did you decide on the glaze?

I pushed a lot for this glaze. After visiting the Bitossi ceramics archive near Florence and seeing it on much older, more traditional vases, I was really keen to use it. They were using this glaze even before their collaborations with designers. I found that interesting because it was part of Bitossi’s own history, but also because it had the complexity of something archaeological.

But the glaze came first, and then we tested different textures. The glaze has its own scale — a complexity of a few millimeters — so the texture had to work with that rather than compete with it. It’s a bit like applying a grid or grain over a pixelated image: the two systems have to be compatible. In this case, the finer texture meant a smaller grid. The pattern itself came from a mix of references, from small objects to the architecture of Brutalist buildings.

Do you imagine the vases in any interiors you’ve designed?

Totally. First, I’m going to have a set delivered to my home near Brussels, and I plan to photograph them there. I’d be very happy if my clients wanted to have them in their homes as well. We’re designing a few residential projects at the moment, including one house in Florida that I’m very excited about. It’s my first house designed entirely from the ground up. It’s Brutalist and minimal at the same time, and works with repetition in a way that is similar to the vases.

Where else would you like to see the collection?

Anywhere, really. [Laughs.] That’s the nice thing about them, they’re very versatile, so the goal is to distribute them as widely as possible and see them in different contexts. That would be very exciting.