Recently, the employees of the belgian architecture office Jaspers-Eyers asked me to create a special strip for the occasion of their founder Michel Jaspers being an architect for 50 years. Below is a picture of a glowing Michel Jaspers posing with the original drawn strip in pen and ink. 

 

Today’s strip is based on the table design of Monique Verelst. She designed this extraordinary table as a part of the scenography of the museum Emile Verhaeren in Antwerp. I’ve got to know Monique and her husband Koen Deprez (also an interior designer like Monique) at the varnishing day of one of their exhibitions in the former house of the late Herman Teirlinck. When I saw her table pitch-up, it inspired me for a strip. Below’s a picture of the table. You can find more information about the work of Monique Verelst and Koen Deprez on their website: www.deprez-verelst.be .
 

This week I was in Brussels at the book presentation of my friend David Gullentops. He has written a wonderful french poetry booklet titled “Acitadines”. David is a professor at the University of Brussels (VUB) where he teaches french literature, literature theory and poetry. If you’re interested in acquiring this unique piece of work, send an e-mail to david.gullentops@vub.ac.be .

I just got back from a week of writing on the show in Luxemburg in the snow. It’s going to be a great show. If you want to be there, make your reservations quickly. There are only 350 seats.

Today news reports of more than 900 miles of traffic problems because of heavy snowfall which results in more than 2000 miles of traffic problems in comic-strip panels...

 

Who says that buildings and animals cannot co-exist has never seen this scene on my drawing table. Every architect should have a kitty.

By the end of next week the sixth collection book is ready. By ready I mean printed, can be ordered and be signed. That is the dutch version. The english version is yet to come a few weeks later. The first book signing session will be at the interior fair Intirio su 31 jan. – we 3 feb. 2010 in Flanders Expo in Gent at the stand of our partner Techcad (more info at www.techcad.be) where you can also admire the two chairs designed by Archibald. Come en be seated. 

 

The day before yesterday I had dinner with a former coworker when I worked at the city of Antwerp. It was a while ago since I’ve seen him or talked to him. In fact, I think it was already a few years ago. He is an amazing artist. He’s a very well know calligrapher, miniaturist, water colourist, letter sculptor, etcher, book binder, paper maker and he’s very perfectionistic and strenuous towards himself in what he does. He’s the ultimate traditional medieval modern monk. I made a strip for him for his recent retirement where I have actually drawn him as a monk working for Archibald. I need to ask him to make a copy of it because I forgot to copy the original inked drawing myself.
Anyway… if you want to contact him for a job or follow a course with him(He has a beautiful house in the middle of France where he teaches to small groups): his name is Paul Melsen and his e-mailaddress is paul@melsengraphics.be. He’s one of the best in his field. Trust me, I’ve worked with him for three years, without a monk’s habit.

 

Todays strip is based on the drawing of Archibalds throat and tongue I made first before writing the strip. Sometimes I have these weird images popping in my head. This one was intended as a painting only, but over the last years I’ve realized that no matter what I come up with, wether it’s a painting, a strip, a design or anything else it mixes in different media. I’m also thinking of making a poster out of this one. I my paintings I want to integrate a strong idea or concept in a single image and painted in the colours I use for the strip. Specially the red colour comes out very nice on canvas although it needs many layers. I paint with acrylics on canvas, which I like because it dries very fast and I don’t have much patience.

The first two elements of Archibalds furniture are ready. Two chairs called Sit One (Preliminary one) and Sit Two (preliminary two), a universal chair and a children’s chair. They are designed by Archibald and manufactured by the Belgian design label St-Paul Home. They will be presented this weekend at the Design Fair Maison et Objet in Paris.
I like the result very much. The material is 100% pure natural dried Belgian heavy oak, which makes the chairs quite heavy but also of extremely high quality for which the label stands for. They are available in different colours. The legs were supposed to be white like the legs of the model in the strip, but we’ve decided to keep them in natural oak for two reasons: the first is that we fear that the paint would come of because of possible bumping the legs. The secound reason is that surprisingly I liked the contrast between the raw hard wood and the comic-strip colours of the seating and back. It gives the chair a sort of surreal impression. The very first moment I saw the chairs I thought they were weird. This is exactly the feeling I want to give it: is it a real chair or a comic-strip chair. It’s like it was caught between two world.
The designs started from sketches related to the strip. I call them chairs that are not chairs yet, but still an idea, concept or model of a chair. You could see them as comic-strip chairs. They express my intentions of walking the line between virtuality and reality, like I do with Archibald.
It’s like the little model in the strip who can talk and questions himself before even being a building.
The idea for the children’s chair is based on the way kids sometimes sit in awkward positions, like Archie sits in the comic drawing of the chair. These chairs are available in many fun colours. I think it would be great furniture for children’s schools with each kid having his own colour.
The purpose is also to produce a table, a closet and a small drawing closet on wheels like Archibald uses in the strip. I’m working on the designs for those.
Well I hope you like them. You can watch pictures of the chairs here. You can order/buy them directly from St-Paul Home. You can find the contact details also at www.st-paul-home.com .

A few days ago I visited Vittorio Simoni. A man exploding with energy. I’ve got to know him at the jury of the Fidias Awards, the Belgian awards for interior architecture. He’s both an architect and an interior architect. This extra value is seen very clear in his work. Not only he has an strong vision but also a keen eye for details. He gave me two books of his work as a present. He’s a spontaneous and versatile person. He makes incredibly great sketches. I admire this a lot. He keeps them all very organized, contrary to yours truly. They are a few published at the beginning in his book. He mostly sketches when he’s on vacation. He also plays music as a drummer. He can act too. When we talked about the films of Jacques Tati he performed a few live trailers of his movies. When I said we were working on live sketches he suggested us a fine scenario. One we’ll certainly use. More info about Vittorio and his work: www.simoni.be .

During our vacation in France we’ve found a kitty. In fact she found us and she wouldn’t leave us anymore. Kitties choose their own boss they say and that’s how we felt. It’s an incredibly sweet lady. We call her Tommy. That is before the vet told us what her gender is. A question of respect not peeking under a woman’s skirt. Because she wouldn’t leave, we couldn’t locate her boss and our hearts couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind in her weak condition, we decided to give her a new home joining our other kitty-friend Sammy. After some back and forth threatening they seem to get along fine now except for the fight for the, now painful, soft spot on my lap in front of the TV…

I now truly believe the ice caps are melting having seen a polar bear attending a basketball game in a sports hall filled with sweaty air. To be more accurate it was the heated mascotte from the Leuven Bears, the major league basketball team from Leuven. The building, called the" sportoase", is a part of the Philips site designed by Alfredo De Gregorio in collaboration with Aldo Rossi and is, contrary to the indoor polar mascotte, a "cool" building. I like to go there. It's an ellipse shaped building with several sports facilities like an indoor swimming pool and a sports arena. It's located on a nice large square and gives you the feeling of walking towards an ancient roman arena. Maybe the fact that Alfredo has rebuilt the Gallo-Roman museum in Tongeren has had some influence. About the game: Leuven won from Bergen with a score of 84 - 72. More about Alfredo's work and this project : www.degregorio.be .
 

No, it was not an ice-cream evening for anti-softice fans but the presentation of the software Intericad for interior architecture presented by TechCad. I was there for a short book signing session and of course a snack and a drink. Below are some pictures. Meer info about the software: www.intericad.eu .

Peter and David of TechCad
 

pleasant atmosphere
 

Discussion about software and free hand sketching

Archibald has been asked to act as a jury member in the Fidias Awards, the annual awards of the AINB, the belgian professional organisation of interior designers. Yesterday was the first round of the jury. I can't talk about the jury itself but the pleasant discussions about architecture in general and its philosophical connotations about life afterwards with the colleague jury members were very entertaining. Specially in combination with some terrific wine and cheese. So amusing that I came home at 1.30AM in the morning and still had the energy to work before going to bed at 4AM. Look's promising for next week's jury round.
More info about the Fidias Awards can be found here: www.fidias-awards.be . You can subscribe for the event on WE-evening 25th November 2009 in the Red&Blue in Antwerp.

On saturday 3 oktober 2009 Archibald moderated and hosted live the opening of the business center of the Center for Sustainable Building of the Province of Antwerp in Belgium. He welcomed all guests, gave an introduction lecture with strips on sustainable building, moderated the speakers and did a book signing at the reception afterwards.
Click here to see some pictures of the event.

Yesterday I went to the DVD presentation of "Le Monde de Jean Cocteau" in the culture café of the VUB, the University of Brussels. The DVD was presented by David Gullentops (VUB) en was shown full length (55 min).

The educative and scientific DVD « Le Monde de Jean Cocteau » focusses on the observation of connections between literature and other art forms based on the work of Jean Cocteau.  The DVD is produced in french but they are working hard on an english version. The DVD is not for sale yet, but will be offered for sale soon. If you want more information about the DVD you can contact the author David Gullentops at david.gullentops@vub.ac.be .

I was surprised to see how many talents Jean Cocteau had: poet, filmmaker, writer, playwriter, designer... I liked his drawings a lot. You can find more information about Cocteau here: www.jeancocteau.net .