Buro Belèn is founded by Brecht Duijf and Lenneke Langenhuijsen, who met at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
After graduating with honors from the Eindhoven Design Academy, Brecht started working as a part-time designer for Forbo Flooring and then for a few years as a freelance designer and then decided to found his own clothing label “18-11-81 “in 2014. In 2010 he won a Classi Calvijn award, in 2012 his activity was funded by BKVB.
Lenneke graduated with honors from the Eindhoven Design Academy with her Wooden Textiles project and was among the finalists of the Doen Material Prize in 2011, the Green Design Competition in 2012 and won Open Design Italia in 2013.
Together, Brecht and Lenneke founded their studio ” Buro Belèn ” in Amsterdam and initially received a grant from the DOEN Foundation for “sustainable creative entrepreneurs”; currently they teach at the Design Academy of Eindhoven and the Artemis Akademie Amsterdam, alternating teaching design projects.
The “Another Plaid” project has obtained great visibility for the original and highly ecological process through which it is carried out: it is a question of not completely completing the coloring and dyeing process in a machine that has not been rinsed, thus saving both dyeing water.
A single reel of wool will be transformed into a single plaid with its unique color pattern; the merino wool plaid shows a great contrast of color and clear signs, incorporating a range of colors. Therefore, by abstractly modifying the first phase of the industrial process which normally sees an equally colored reel, each plaid varies in design and color; the outside of the coil absorbs more color than the inside, especially when it is intertwined with a different texture. The result is poetic and very graphic at the same time.
Buro Belèn then design with materials, expanding and expanding the material qualities of spaces, objects and products and creating a tangible design for the future. At the heart of their approach are the intuitive, emotional and physical aspects of design, which translate into products and visions that show unexpected applications of material and colors, as well as revaluations of conventional techniques.
One of their best known projects is “Cambials”: a label that produces natural wood interior fabrics. Among the works also the stole commissioned by the Dutch manufacture CHP, in silk with a very high definition photographic reproduction of naked bodies of friends and collaborators: a technological and romantic garment, not without a subtle vein of irony.
