Provincial Award for Design 2014

Every two years, the Province of East Flanders hands out an award for design, including industrial, graphic, and artisanal design. Design and the applied arts dominate our daily lives and make our residential, working, and living environments more attractive, colourful, and also more comfortable. East Flanders is home to a vast pool of young design talent.

With the design award, the provincial authorities seek to encourage and stimulate all of this young talent, and offer them career opportunities in addition to other initiatives such as the recent creation of the design platform Ministry of Makers in conjunction with the City of Ghent and the Ghent University College.

The 2014 Provincial Design Award was handed to Hermine Van Dijck (1989) for her magnificent textile designs. As a young textile designer, she is enamoured with the poetry of handmade designs, and is keen to display the beauty thereof in unique textile pieces for which she uses both artisanal and industrial techniques. Pieter ‘Pjotr’ Willems (1981) received a nomination bonus for his multifaceted graphic design, which he envisions rather as the creation of a concept than as a separate product.

The exhibition showing the finest work from both designers offers the visitor a fascinating and diverse image of contemporary design in East Flanders.