Bertjan Pot
EG Rotterdm, Netherlands

Bertjan Pot was born 1975 in Nieuwleusen, the Netherlands (a small town in the east of the country). Now, he lives in Rotterdam. He graduated from Man and Identity at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 1998. He likes to work on various projects. Bert Jan:

"Sometime I initiate a project myself because I like it so much that I think it just has to be made. Sometimes I am commissioned to do a project because other people like my work and think I am the one to do the job. My main fascination is material and production processes Everything is made out of material and in my opinion materializing is an inevitable but often forgotten part of the design process.

In design I like a flirt with computer esthetics and industrial production methods, but without using a computer (at least not as a design tool) and sometimes also without the industrial production method. Almost all designs come from experiments in materials, old and new. The way a product feels is just as important as the way it looks.

Only recently I was reflecting on my work and I found out that a lot of projects could be described as structural and non structural skins (thank you Ed van Hinte! ). As in the Knitted lamp where I froze a soft textile around a cluster of balloons and where the resin drained textile becomes the hard structure. It is similar to the Carbon Chair, the Random Light and the Random Chair where a skin becomes a product. Also in the Old Fruits, Tops and Bottoms where a dried skin of a squash becomes the actual structure of a product one could speak of a structural skin.
The Non structural skins can be found in the Seamless Chair, or a project like The Anarchistic Chess and the Slim-Table for Arco, where objects are covered in an extra layer, but where the extra skin is not structural but gives the piece its own specific identity, meaning or function. "Prizes: -Materiaalfondsprijs 2003, with the random chair, the best resent material experiment in design.
-Profielprijs 2004, for using textile fibers in an extraordinary way.
-Elle Deco Award 2005, “Best in Seating” for the Carbon chair, made in cooperation with Marcel Wanders.Work in the collections of:
-Victoria and Albert Museum, London,Shrunken bench and Randomlight
-Musuem Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Random Chair (prototype)
Carbon Copy, Excavated VaseOld Fruit Versatile.
-Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Random Chair, Carbon Copy,
Carbon Chair
-FNAC (French national art collection) Old Fruit, VersatileSome (group) exhibitions:-March 2000 “Dutch new innovators”, International Design Center, Nagoya, Japan
-May/August 2000 “Een steekje los”, Nederlands Textiel Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands
-February 2001 “Huisvlijt”, De Krabbedans, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
-October/November 2001 “Stroomversnelling”, Het Groninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands
-April 2002 “Sidekicks”, Spazio Consolo, Milan, Italy.
-September 2002 “Link-architectuur 1:1” Nai, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
-September- January 2002/3 “Smart Allice” Centraal museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
-January - March 2003 “ Try-out/ The Puffinclub” Galerie Vivid, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
-April 2003 “The Puffinclub” Spazio Consolo, Milaan, Italy.
-February/March 2004 “Brilliant!” Victoria and Albert Museum , London, England
-Oktober/November 2004 “A Fine Mess” first solo!, Brutto Gusto, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
-Januari 2005 “Last Exit to the Netherlands”, Silvera, Paris, France
-Februari-May 2005 “Nest”, Stedelijk museum Amsterdam, The Netherlands
-April 2005 “Grazie dei fior”, Sala Prova, Milan, Italy
-June-September 2005 “Project Rotterdam”;, museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
-September 2005 “innovative dutch textiles” FIT museum, New York, USA
-September-December 2005 “ Just In” Dutch Architecture Institute (Nai) Rotterdam The Netherlands
-October 2005 “Automatic Pushbutton Re…” Contempo gallery, Eindhoven.
-January 2006 “Temporary Office for Form” Style Park, Cologne, Germany