Quentin de Coster
Liège, Belgien

Designer of ingenious solutions for everyday life, Quentin de Coster’s approach is clearly rooted in the purest definition of good design. Born in 1990 in one of the most important centres of the Industrial Revolution – the city of Liège in Belgium – his precocious activity is anchored in a continuous observation of people’s habits and rituals translated into objects that go beyond a mere functional definition.

Simple and accessible, his design is made of new, authentic, playful things that help us to furnish our life with meaningful details. Daily common gestures and needs become desirable moments of existence. Quentin de Coster’s good design is funded on tangible and intangible values. The industrial principle of focusing on volume is driven by production and commercial purposes, but it is also a philosophical vision : the reproducibility of an item means to increase its capacity of reaching out to as many people as possible and providing them with intelligent human-centered tools. Designer’s ability is to dialogue with industrial rules, norms, standards and constraints in order to keep the integrity of the design by fostering sustainable solutions. But his trust in industrial design also includes another cultural prospective : that of being a concrete expression of timeless basic needs and desires.

Design as much as art is a peculiar expression of a historical period, and its authority as an anthropological find makes it eternal. Quentin de Coster strongly believes in design as an experience, as a balanced interplay of function and aesthetics, logics and emotions, industrial codes and storytelling. An experience which is intimate and shareable at the same time, thanks to a language that is a synthesis of daily and everlasting idioms, between pragmatism and art. Due to his multiple academic background (ESA St-Luc Liège, Politecnico di Milano, ENSAV La Cambre), he is building up a broaden design vision as a holistic observation and practice both originated by a continuous contact with people, culture, industry, economics and society. Despite his young age, de Coster is an attentive connoisseur of materials and production systems, manual and digital work, traditional know-how and cutting edge technology.

Shapes are sculptural but sober, logic but expressive ; materials are respected in their physical and tactile qualities ; functions are unexpected, intelligent, and ingenious. Thanks to his ability to manage serial art and to combine concepts with production skills, he already collaborated with many international companies. Common people, daily habitats, usual tools and furniture, industrial machinery and market laws are the battlefield where the designer reinvents cultural values and sustainable behaviours. Quentin de Coster is definitely a designer aiming at making life a better place where to live and to evolve, whether designing industrial or luxury goods, limited editions or mass-produced items.