Meet Camiel
Camiel van Noten is a Brussels based architect. His work surpasses the borders of architecture and investigates the relationship between architecture, scenography and art.
Camiel highly values interdisciplinarity. His work surpasses the borders of architecture and investigates the relationship between architecture, scenography and art. Lies and Camiel have known each other personally for years, but their professional paths crossed at the University of Antwerp. Here, Camiel administered a workshop, “The Question of Cladding”, designing and producing tiles with the attending students.
For the Camiel bag, a large tote bag was made with a custom lining, based on Camiel's cladding practise.
The tiles Camiel created during his workshops at the UA consist of the same material as the objects he designed for the inside of the first Camiel bag edition. The creation process also followed a similar logic.
“Jean Arp focused on chance and arbitrariness in “According to the Laws of Chance”, dropping painted pieces of paper on the surface of his work. I’m inspired by this painting and try to incorporate chance in my artistic process as well. I believe artists should pay more attention to the unpredictable nature of experimenting, letting go of control. All my objects are handmade. The material we use never reacts in the exact same way, giving every object a unique texture and original colour sequence.”
“As a student, I already felt that there often is a disconnection between designing and creating. In school, ideas are contrived and executed behind a computer. Best case scenario, the designer creates a scale model. That’s a pity because it can be very inspiring to start working on something right away, laying the foundations for a design as you move forwards. I’ve created both my objects and tiles based on this idea.”
He performed these experiments in collaboration with Angel Solanellas Terés. Together with Lies, the trio investigated how they could merge this process with a bag design. Lies chose to incorporate the objects’ pattern in the lining of the bag, a totebag that can be worn short as a handbag or on your shoulder with a longer strap.
“I use it often, especially when travelling. The bag is easy to adjust, there’s space for my laptop and I can put it on top of my trolley. It’s very simple and practical.”
The Camiel bag is a limited series of 50 numbered bags.
All items of this collaboration are sold out.
