Charles Kaisin

Charles Kaisin (5 December 1972) is a Belgian designer.

Kaisin is a designer whose work explores the processes that generate a form. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2001, in Ron Arad’s studio in London, after having completed an Architecture degree in Brussels.

After two internships in Jean Nouvel’s studio in Paris then with Tony Cragg in 1997, he took part in an exchange program with the Kyoto University for the Arts in 2000 during which he conducted research on new materials.

Kaisin made recycling one of his favourite themes. Its niche: create objects with a contemporary design from recycled materials.

Next to designing objects, Kaisin deals with interior design and is artistic director for fashion shows. He has carried out projects for the offices in Paris of Le Louvre Abu Dhabi, for Swatch, for the MAC's (Museum of Contemporary Art Grand-Hornu, Belgium), for the luxury house Delvaux, Royal Boch and for the fashion brand Chine Collection.

Kaisin teaches design at Saint-Luc, Architecture School in Brussels.

In his work on recycling, Kaisin transforms an empty bottle in a glass, he diverts the porthole of a washing machine in a bowl, designs furniture with newspaper material, creates clothes and bags from plastic shopping bags, so many topics to bring a different perspective on life and death of objects.

Kaisin found the inspiration for his K-bench in his Japanese experience. The honeycomb structure of this extensible bench revolutionizes many misconceptions in design but also in the use of materials. The K-bench can take many forms and be placed both inside and outside. Charles also made a newspaper version of the K-Bench.

For Royal Boch, Kaisin creates reversible trays and plates, where the movement is bound to the function to initiate another way to share the art of the table.

He also designed the inside wing of MACs (Museum of Contemporary Art in Grand-Hornu, Belgium), chocolates for Pierre Marcolini and created a bag for Delvaux.

• To come :
  • Internationales Design Zentrum Berlin : Retrospective (October 2008)
  • Museum for Contemporary Arts, Grand-Hornu, Belgium : Retrospective (May 2009)
• On-going and recent :
  • Grand Palais (Paris) : exhibition of hairy chair
  • Mudam (Museum for Modern Art, Luxembourg): K-Bench
  • Carrousel du Louvre (Paris) : Newspaper Bench
  • Kyoto Art Center : recycled paper chair