Piet Hein Eek on scrap wood, waste and making the most of 'available possibilities'.

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Material Matters with me, Grant Gibson. We've been going for a couple of years now, but for listeners who might be unfamiliar with all this, the idea behind the show is that I speak to a designer, maker, artist or architect about material or technique with which they're intrinsically linked and discover how it changed their lives and careers. This episode is largely concerned with wood, so it's really wonderful that it's been sponsored by the American Hardwood Export Council or Ahek for short. The organisation has just opened its latest project in collaboration with Wallpaper magazine at London's Design Museum. Discovered, designers for tomorrow brings together 20 emerging designers from around the world to create a piece of furniture or an object that investigates their relationship with touch, reflection and strength during the Covid crisis. Among other things, the brief are small to think about coping with isolation and the changing relationship between the physical and the digital at a time when so many people have been forced to communicate through Zoom. The only real stipulation was they had to work with one of four timbers from the American Hardwood Forest, Red Oak, American Cherry and Hard and Soft Maple. I've been helping out on the project for most of the summer and I reckon the results are rather wonderful. It's well worth a visit to the Design Museum to check it out. Today, I'm hugely delighted to welcome Pete Hein-Eck onto the show. The world-renowned Dutch designer made his name when he graduated from the Academy for Industrial Design, Iron Toven, with a cupboard made from scraps of wood he found a lumber yard that was in 1990. He said to his own practice three years later, creating furniture that in his words was designed from available possibilities, with pieces using waste from other processes and sometimes waste from that waste. Products are created around the materials the practice has in stock, whether that be enormous wooden beams or metal pipes and the machines it possesses. Craft is vitally important to everything he's produced and production is at the heart of his enormous studio in Iron Toven. It includes a shop, restaurant, art gallery and most recently a hotel. During his career, the designer has also branched out into architecture, starting by creating extraordinary garden outhouses and expanding into pieces of urban planning, as well as collaborating with brands such as Leff and Ikea. We've caught up with him as he's preparing to exhibit once again at the Salonium Alain, arguably the world's most important design festival. Pete Hein, thank you very much for doing this. Well, it's my pleasure. Was that always accurate? Yeah, it's okay, I didn't find any. Although the hotel has to be opened, it will be one hotel room. Oh, it's open yet. Yeah, it has been postponed because of Corona and actually it's maybe the other way around like it is in the world. So we were not ready, but it wasn't that bad that we were not ready. So we didn't put all our efforts we could in it and now we probably opened one year later than we thought we would. Which is not so bad in this case. So next month is the grand opening. How many rooms have you got? 13. So it's a very small hotel. But the whole where the rooms are feels like a real official hotel, but it's only one level. The normal hotel is like 10 levels like that, but we have just one level with a classic hotel configuration. That's quite nice. We've caught you just between the August holidays and then the all new September design festival in Milan, usually it's held in April. Are you showing again at Rosanna or Landy in the space that you have at the back there? Is that what you would be? Yeah, we will be on the top floor as we were like last five years. Kind of tucked away a little bit. Yeah, exactly. We started at Rosanna or Landy's when she started almost in what's now the restaurant. And slowly we moved through the whole building. And since like five years, I think we're at the top floor. And for us, it's actually the best floor we could have because a lot of people arrive there because it's in the back of her store where most people take a look at. And we have the advantage at least we think that's an advantage that we only get dedicated to guests and it's not like walking around searching for something else. So the people who come are really interested and they come often in a straight line to us if they come for what we present. So in general, we're very happy to be in that specific place at the well, what is it? It's a factory but it's a huge place in a very chaotic so which I actually love. I'm glad to ask what it is because I was trying to work out. I was going to call it an "imporium" but I'm not sure that's right either because it's not really a shop. Well, I don't know what it is really, but it's a fascinating place. We have new pieces on display. Is that important in Milan? Normally it's really important. We never really focus on showing new stuff but our rule is we show what's happened between last Solona and this. So normally it's one year between April and April and we take the new objects we created. And often it means that we want to finish something in the very end so just at the last possible moment. And in this case we had more than two and a half years of product development and also because we are working on the hotel along the way if you start thinking about the hotel, you need a lot of items so we designed a series of objects for the hotel and we'll show it during the design week in Holland because then it's opening of the hotel more or less. But we took a toilet paper holder with us to Milan as a stronghold for the hotel presentation. Very good. But we made a lot of other objects and we take a kitchen, lamps and actually one really new lamp but it's something we communicated already in different sizes from the one we show now. And we have a watch we developed with a left Amsterdam which is brand new also. So we have two products which are like launched at this very moment and most of the other products we made last two and a half years and this is only a selection because we made much more. Yeah, you are prolific. There's no question. And I was intrigued because I get your newsletter where you spent your summer in my holidays in Mavales. Yeah, tell me all about this is in the door doing I think and it's a converted mill. Tell us a little bit about this because it's taken ten years to create right? Yeah, I bought it. Actually, I didn't bought it but I made an agreement with what is a friend of me now to buy it. This happened five years later and we started in 2006 and I think we finished the whole complex as it will be never really finished but that was finished and possible to sleep and eat and drink there. So we had two houses finished in 2015. So it's sort of ten years it took but in between we bought this place here. So it's not really fair to say it took ten years but altogether after buying it it needed some time and also some thinking. I'm happy that it took ten years because well there's a lot of things to talk about because the whole process was quite interesting and the mill itself is one of my most I think one of my biggest projects and I learned a lot about it myself, about myself. So that's an interesting one. What did you learn about yourself during the process? Yeah, well it took ten years. This is one of the things which in my work is very important and I realized it along this time is that if I want something I don't really actually focus on the cost because if it costs a lot I just take more time and then in the end it will succeed anyhow until now. So I'm not sure if this will be always true but in this case it took ten years and because I took this time it was possible to make it in terms of finance but also in terms of intellectual space. You need some time in your mind to think in a good way about problems and solutions and to really adopt a place in an environment. You can't do that in a short time at least of course when you get older you get better at it but it improves by taking time. And one of the things which was quite important for me is that I slowly realized by working there and living there and going on holidays and being there I slowly realized the essence of the place apart from the fact that there is a small river which cost which was the reason to make a water mill there. But also the source of materials was very important. So of course they had wood from the forest because it's a very green environment but they used the stones up hill because the river is a rocky hill, very steep hill and they got the stones from the hill which stumbled in the river and they used the river to transport the stones to the dikes and the houses. So the way of transport was the river also in terms of constructing materials and the cast iron wheels which were used to give the power to the mill to water power were made in the forge like they made cast iron one kilometer up river. So normally you would never be able to get such heavy wheels with a horse and wagon to this place but they had the river and an industry for cast iron upstream. Actually this was the reason for the wealth of the castle and the mill was part of the castle property. So they made guns and weapons for the French kings and made their money and because of that this castle had the money to develop the mill and other the whole area. So the nature actually provided the materials and the reason to make a mill there. I realized that my work is very much dedicated. to using the materials and techniques and craft which are available. And at that time they didn't have a choice, but they just had to make it like that, because otherwise you won't have a meal. If you don't have water, if you don't have transport, if you don't have stones, you can't make a die. And so the die is made on the rock bottom and not on the soil, which I found out because I was not so serious as they were two hundred years ago. So you really need to be on the rocks to make a waterproof die. And of course you want to have a small die with a huge amount of water capacity. So they really selected this place with a lot of knowledge about technique and nature and so on, which I don't think we do as serious and thoroughly as they did at that time. They didn't have a choice, but because of modern times we seem to be able to do what we want. In a sense that you can use the materials you want, you can make everything waterproof. You can live where you want, because for example the house is also in the winter, located at the place where the sun goes down, which is important if you don't have heating, apart from some fire places. So they knew if I build the home here, I'll have maximum sun during the winter. So they were so aware about what nature provided. And I think I'm working like that. I've felt a parallel with the mill. But I do it because of my own intuition, and they had to do it because it was necessary to survive. And maybe it's still like that. Maybe we think we're free to choose materials and we think we're free to annoy or not think about nature and not working with what's available, but we can choose and do what we want. Like a total freedom because it's possible. But maybe if you look at the footprint and the environment, we should see it as necessary that we work with what's around us. I was interested in the mill, well for lots of reasons, but there are a number of themes that crop up in your work when you look at the press clippings on you. And one of the first that gets mentioned in all the pieces is this fascination you have with ruins. You're to England, I think, with your father as a child, looking at old castles. And as we say, we've just done up this mill and the studio complex that you're talking to us from, which will come on to in a bit, I suspect, was a complete mess when you bought it. So what's the fascination with ruins? That's something which also took time to realise. So you start with being, I recall it, excited if you see a ruin. I was always very happy to see ruins and from my very, very childhood until now it has been a fascination and it is something which has never become less. So if I see an old building or a ruin, I start thinking. And now of course I'm a designer and professional working with this kind of buildings or ruins or moments. But when I was a child, it was harmless. It was just that I really loved it. And I realised along the way that if you look at a ruin, it provides the history. So you can fantasise about how it was. But at the same time you can also think about what you want to do with it or what it will be. So it's a sort of physical connection between the past and the future, which is for me actually almost how I work. I always use what's there to make something new and a ruin is like the best possible example for this moment. Was your father happy to take you to England to look at castles? Do you think this is a slightly curious obsession my son is developing? No, no, he never complained. But he never complained anyhow. He also had to always tell the same story more or less from the child bible. And I always want to hear the same story and he never said, "Why again? He just read it for me." So I think he knew that I like traditional things, you know, something which repeats all the time. It's a little bit my mind that I try to keep. I like it when things are the same because there are enough things happening. So why not keep everything if possible the same? But you also talk about liking chaos. Yeah, yeah. And how creative chaos is. So there's a contradiction is there not? Yeah, so maybe that's the reason why I see life as something which is not controllable. And I don't put a lot of energy in it except that when everything is sort of stable, then the chaos has maximum space without damaging things. So for me it's like if every day is the same, there is enough to do. Can we talk about the scrap wood series, Pete Hein, which kind of made your name really, I think it's fair to say. I mean you graduated as we said in the intro from the Academy for Industrial Design in Intevent with a cupboard made from reclaimed wood from a lumber yard, it was in 1990. So how did that come about? Legend has it, it was because you were storing a cabinet for your sister. Yeah, is that true? That's why I would happen. So I was there to look for old wood because I had to renovate an old cupboard which you can't do with new wood. So I was just looking for the same kind of wood in a lumber yard. And in Holland we have a huge tradition of recycling wood from architecture. So and it's of course it's a small country. So if we build something 99% of the time we have to take something away also. And if you go to France or in England it's much more easy to build next to the old building, the new building. So you see a lot of new and old next to each other. Although in Holland in agriculture so farmers do have these two houses next to each other, the old one which becomes ruined and the new one. But we have a tradition of demolishing buildings and recycling the materials. I think we've always done that. But until that moment until I actually made the design in 1989, it was never used for domestic purposes. And I looked, I was walking through the wood piles at this lumber yard and I thought actually I like this better than you would. So why not use it because it's cheap and it's available and it gave the opportunity to make a cupboard which can be made in series. But each of them will be different which was interesting I thought at that moment. So for me the material and the characteristics of the material gave me the perfect starting point for a design. And I was able to process the wood in the workshop at school which was also interesting for me because I didn't want to outsource and I didn't want to work with people who after my degree were not available. And I also knew that after graduating I would start my own company with the same machines as at school. So if I was able to make those cupboards at school I would also be able to make them later on when I started my company. Were you a good carpenter by that stage? I've always been quite handy I think that's the way. So I've been always making stuff also from childhood from very small until now I always make a lot. So for me making things with my own hands was one of the starting point for my career and my company. I really like doing it myself and I always take the fact that something has to be made as part of the design. So both the machines as the craft are quite important for what we do. For your process. I mean there's a story that I think I must have read in one of your own books. You've written a lot of books, you're very prolific publisher as well. It's fascinating. But Highsbacker was head of the department at the time when he graduated from Iron Toven and there was going to be a show in Amsterdam rather than Iron Toven itself. Something you were opposed to and you refused to cooperate. It says in your book. So were you a bit of a rebel? Yes, I'm sure I still am but not like high said we had also a very nice relationship but we quarreled a lot. Or I quarreled a lot and you let me I think but I think I'm a rebel but not to be a rebel. So it's not my goal. I'm not so easy to convince by somebody else and the more authority the less convinced I am. So with Corona it was a little bit difficult. Well that's interesting. How did Corona go because you have this huge organisation? It must have been a very difficult 18 months. Yes I know. We had practical problems with the first part of the crisis when the turnover went down but after that it recovered. So we were only damaged the first part of the crisis and we had at that time enough work so it was not so bad. The restaurant was really bad because it has to close all the time and open close and so. So there the problem was big but in Holland like in most European countries the government were giving a lot of help not complete but enough to survive. But actually we had a huge advantage by Corona because I already wanted to or tried to change the spirit and the way we produce in the company we actually had production problems for years and it had to do with the culture in the company the way we operate. And I couldn't change it through last five or six years. It was impossible. It was a sort of cultural problem in the company and at a certain moment in September last year I even thought maybe I have to change everything or stop or I don't know how but we can't go on like this because we lose money on almost everything we do. and our main. thing in the company is production. So if you if you fail in your main thing you have a big problem and we were happy to have the worst moment at the moment Corona came. So we were helped because we had very bad turnover by the government because of Corona but part of it was just because we were very badly organized or not good working. And if things slow down when you're having a hard time it's less hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If things slow down when you're doing very well you have a problem because all of a sudden did you have to lay people off? No, no, we didn't like that. Nobody. And then we had to change and so it was quite dramatic actually for myself and a lot of people were talking to me like well you have to get rid of half of the amperees go on with the good half and I said okay tell me which half because I like them all and of course sometimes you have a problem with one of the amperees but it was not the problem of individual amperees. So I thought it's my own fault. It's it's not you know if you have a company which is a production company and people are not focused on production anymore then you did something wrong. So I communicated that I and the management team but mostly myself made a big mistake or I was not able to get the right focus but now we had to change because going on like this wouldn't work so I had some speeches to all the amperees and also individual conversations very short like I called it three minute conversations and I asked everybody can you change do you think it's necessary and are you able to put your shoulders under it and everybody was like I can change and I can do much better and we should do it and everybody was positive and actually after that it changed we're much better focused on production and everybody is positive and I think one of the reasons why they adopted this change was that there was insecurity of corona because I tried it so many times so I think we had a wonderful help from this class. So what did you change? What was the fundamental key to the change you're talking about? I think the fact that my conclusion was that I should be in charge of production instead of the team which I've never been focused on production myself it's always been done with the team so I changed this to my responsibility at least and responsibility so in the end they work for me and we work together so I made clear that we had to change something individually and as in a group and I didn't blame them I just said I did it wrong and now we're doing everybody is doing it wrong so let's change this and let's be focused on production and we made a few dramatic changes also so like practical things so that everybody felt every day okay we're going to work now so everything which was not focused on production we stopped and everybody agreed to do that and I think this insecure time provided the moment to make this change and all the new people who came in last years and last year they all came in a very positive environment and that's also a big difference between now and five years three years or four years ago at that time they adopted the wrong spirit and now they come in very positive and are a part of the new alone you know the new way of working so I think we couldn't have had a more positive moment than this moment for us yeah suddenly people to employ now now it's I think around 80 in total but we always had 110 normally it's between 90 and 100 something like that and you enjoy the management side because classically you know designer and architects they start out small they get bigger they have a machine they have to feed and they find themselves getting further and further away from the design or the creation side that they enjoyed do you find that have you found that actually there's two answers I designed more than I've ever done because of this situation because there's an organization helping me with all kind of stuff and the other thing is that I do like the organization and I do like working with people so I asked somebody to help me through this time at least I asked him what should I do when it was really bad and he set up a hole after a few weeks thinking he gave me a lot of questions and one of the questions he asked is exactly the same thing as you did only more specific he said do you like working with your employees and I said yes I love it I love to work with the people around me and I love them so for me it's one of the qualities of having an organization is that you have people around you with whom you have to make like the best possible situation but also the best possible product or effort you know you don't need to be successful specifically but if you everybody is happy and doing is very best the chance that it will be successful becomes bigger and I like this part of the job very much because I read somewhere that you attempted to study economics at one stage is that true yeah it was when I started after my I recall it preliminary school or the foundation or something so then I had to choose what to study and it was either furniture or design to become a furniture designer and manufacturer or economy with the same goal and I'm happy that I started at the design academy because I was really a very bad designer and I'm quite good at economics so I'm sure half of that is true because we're talking about structure the company but we haven't talked about the complex the building itself you know hugely intriguing in the first instance I'm toven you kind of stayed after graduating you've been around the I'm toven area I think ever since what's the draw of I'm toven for me the reason to stay here was the fact that there's a lot of space because a lot of industry left this area I feel it's the biggest but there's a lot of empty buildings which are affordable so you can rent or buy for normal prices and that was for me the major theme is that this is an environment where there's always been production so the suppliers are here the technique is here the engineers are here the infrastructure is here and the employees are here the spirit in Eindhoven is really different from Amsterdam in Amsterdam they make their money with talking and in Eindhoven they make the money with working so and I wanted to produce I talk myself a lot too much maybe but we needed to produce so so it doesn't make sense to have like all the filers on the working area you know they don't talk but work when you bought the site did you have a plan in midget did you know that eventually you're going to have a hotel here or has the whole thing grown kind of organically as you view the space a lot of people say that that the hotel was part of the plans in the beginning because they think they heard that but it can't be like that the half ways so like five years after we opened I think somewhere there was the first time I thought about a hotel but the reason to move to this place was that we wanted to have in contrary to the place we had before a place where the production facility and what we create around it would be a reason to come because we found out that more and more people were interested to visit us also from bigger distances so even from France and Germany and Belgium and Swiss people drove to us like for hours just to see what we're doing so we knew that what we did there was enough reason to come so if you change them the location and the way you present everything into a welcoming open area where it's even nicer to come and where you can eat something then you actually give those people a nicer experience and we also wanted to create a context around our own products to make it more easy to understand what we're doing to make a complete world and from that perspective you might say okay the hotel is part of the plans from the beginning but then in an abstract way but later on we thought okay if we add an hotel it will be even more complete if you come to us now and you sleep in the hotel then the whole experience is from A to set covered completely immersed yeah so and that's the reason and it's actually I can say already now we set a step in this idea of what you can create in terms of an environment for people to be happy and to really feel what it is about in our point of view so the hotel is not a classic design hotel not at all it's mainly extremely warm and open for people and there's a lot of design there's a lot of art there's a lot of strange things but the major theme is that I hope and I think it provides an environment where people really feel nice and comfortable and happy yeah and it's inspiring because of that because it's not like a prestige thing it's only about sentiment about sensitivity actually for me that's design I actually don't want to make something beautiful for the picture I want something which is nice to be or to use or to you know that it gives like an emotional feeling to people hmm you talked about production being the most important element of what you do and you talked a little bit about your process and how it's based on the materials that you have in stock and the machines that you own but I'm just wondering if we could take an example I mean I was quite intrigued by the book you've done on the beam series for instance where you made all sorts of things out of a massive load of beams that you bought for reasons I don't why did you buy all the beams because I thought it was cheap And it was actually the cute meadies were very cheap, so but well it was dramatic. So the transport itself was more expensive than the beams and then we found out that we didn't even have space for it. So I had to rent a whole very big hall because it was an idiot amount of wood to stock it. And we only used just a small part of it per year. So we had a collection almost without beams. But if you have like this amount of beams you start thinking about it. So during the years we finished this stock. What have you made from all these beams? I mean can you run through a short list maybe? Yeah well the beams table beams cupboards the longest table in the world with which at least I call it like that it won't be the longest but it was for a festival of 200 years New York Amsterdam and we made a table which should be transported in a container and it should be 150 meters or something. So we made it from the beams because we had a lot of beams. And I made the beam vases of leftover parts. I made beams cupboards like a pile of beams. We made huge beams cupboards which were in the end because they were impossible to process. And in the end those cupboards became the most beautiful really really really nice stuff. I think it took 10 years to get rid of the beams. And there were also a lot of doors in the deal. So I got like 150 doors also. Yeah I was going to ask you about doors because doors recur a lot in your work. I mean in your architecture and your tab but a lot of cabinets and art pieces where doors end up kind of stuck on walls. What is it about doors that you enjoy so much? Yeah it's the same it's again a childhood story. I don't think I told it this very often but when I was a child I went to on holy days I always made pictures from doors. So I still do actually. I don't do anything with it but I've been fascinated for doors for a long time from my childhood on. And then in 1991 or two after my graduation the certain moment I thought if I take a door from the building and make a cupboard around it it becomes a very nice object because you use something which people recognize in a different way. And then all of a sudden if you start thinking like that a lot of doors become very interesting. So I started collecting doors with this purpose. And in 1996 I had a solo exhibition at the Staling Museum in Amsterdam and we had I don't know how much better maybe 24, 30 covers around all doors and a few of them became classics like the Phillips cupboard was originally with Phillips windows and now we produce the windows also and it's a product which is in our collection since then. Yeah I mean that's a really interesting piece because you've written yourself but it seems quite emblematic of your process. You did discover when you found some Phillips windows and then years later when you had a CNC machine you suddenly found a new way of making it. That's the oak glass window. That's a different one. It's the same time the design of the same time. I don't think the oak was in the in the window series because it was only glass I found. But they actually they have parallel and similar history but the oak cabinet that's really storytelling about the company also because the glass I found at the Phillips lumber yard also was the starting point for the design and because all the glass had the same size I had to adjust the way the cupboard is constructed to the glass which gives some very nice elegant and simple details but it's caused by the fact that all the glass sheets have the same size and we run out of the glass and it was impossible to produce after that and 10 years later because of this router what you mentioned I started rethinking about it and at that time we found out that we had a huge discount on glass like 80% or something so all of a sudden we could produce the product in a commercially interesting manner because the glass was cheaper and we had this machine who could process it in a very efficient way and we actually improved the cupboard at that moment but it says something about the fact that if you design like I do for myself for the same company the knowledge and the design is available throughout the years if you work organized like most designers and like our society is organized so you design for another company and this company buys from another company materials then you don't have like a holistic approach which means that it's always cut into pieces so it's very much less likely that it comes together in an organic way I always say we have like a big bowl with soup and we add all the time like ingredients and we change the heat and so on but it's always there so everything is available and because we have by coincidence a company which started in 1990 and it's until now and everything we've done is here under this roof so there's no knowledge gone there's no materials gone there's no everything is here so also the employees are here who made it before and this is actually also something if you think about sustainability and environment cutting processes in pieces and working all the time with different settings of companies and people it takes a huge amount of energy from those people to actually create a process with an end result and if you keep it together like an old-fashioned company papa mama company then it works so this is the same thing as we have our dealers and most of them we have always the same dealer for the same country from the same city so we collaborate always on the long term which is much more efficient if you think about it when you were coming up with a scrap with table back in the day and with products subsequent to that and with sustainability an important element of your thinking yes and no not in the way we think about so the the current way of thinking about sustainability I think is a level too low so for example you sit in a car you drive a car and then you make it electrical which is still not yesterday so a car this car is 100% eco-friendly or something and I thought that's not true electricity is for 40% made in Europe with goals you know so it's very dirty but it might be in the future better but it's not like 100% sustainable not even a little bit you know electricity is not clean to make it it's only not polluting in this machine so then I get annoyed because it's much better to think about a way not to sit in a car so at a certain moment during the 70s everybody thought well freedom is the freedom where you live and where your work doesn't matter because you transport is no problem and a lot of people live quite long distances from their work which means that you pollute every day also in an electrical car so our solution is then to make it electrical and I would say change this habit yes there's a lot of talk about walkable cities isn't there increasingly yeah so we'll see if that happens I mean I mean treat coming back to the well sort of coming back to the hotel and the sense of people being able to stay and kind of imbue your essence and also there's a sense of transparency in the way that you work and in the various publications that I've read of yours over the last week or so you're very open about projects that went wrong I mean you talk about being taken to court you talk about falling out with norbure business partner the influence of your father-in-law I mean really quite touchingly the death of employees and your reaction to it there are quite a number of coffins in your portfolio which I would suggest is kind of unusual can we talk about failure though it seems to be quite an important part of your process what a hugely important part of your process yeah maybe the communication about it is more open than most people do with I don't think I don't think people have less failures than or more than no the communication of failure I think is interesting I think my failures are average to comparable to other designers and people so absolutely the major thing about this is and that's one of the things which I'm very much aware of in this gross actually each day is that if something succeeds our mind makes it a result of our effort that's how people tend to think and if something fails it's always somebody's else fault or the world's fault and that's strange because failures are much more common than success so I tend to say that the success is you're lucky if you're successful and it's normal to fail and if you approach it like that I think the chance that you will be successful is much bigger because you recognize those two varieties much more clear because if the first thing you say is if something fails this is because of somebody else you won't learn a lot about it and if you think this is a success and it is because of me you don't learn about it either so I think to be honest to yourself about these kind of things those two things it helps you and also it makes life more easy I think if you accept that failures are normal so and to communicate it is a way for me to spread this idea that we shouldn't be actually Maybe it's very hard for yourself or for others because you say, "Yeah, you're wrong," or you do something wrong and on the other end, by accepting it, it's not so bad. It seems to be that I feel different on this aspect than most people around me. It's becoming increasingly fashionable, isn't it? Talking about failure. But I think you were doing it before others, possibly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But talking about it is one, but you have to. But maybe it's fashionable, but it's also a logic response to how we were thinking before. So in that sense, that's also. If I wouldn't have started, with scrap, with somebody else, we'd have started because it was the moment to do it. And I think with a lot of these things, it's not necessary that you're the first or new or I don't mind how you. This is also not like an achievement. Just hanging on about the transparency thread for a moment, because it's important in your work as well, isn't it? It's important that people can see how the pieces are made. It has been always the thing we do. We didn't change anything because from the start, I've always been communicating very open about everything. And if you do everything yourself from ID until the finished product, then it's. Everybody can see that. So it's a very open, natural process because if you come here, and that's also the reason why we wanted to create this space, you see the product in the showroom, and you look down and you see how it's made, from which material, who it's making, you see the designer, that's me, I'm sitting here drawing. So actually, you see, under one roof, the whole process from ID until finished product. And when I started, this was my ID. I wanted to produce and sell my own products. At that time, there was nobody thinking about transparency at all. The only thing which seemed to be important is produce very cheap, which is not possible in Europe, cheap production. But I wanted to do it. In the end, of course, because people really love to understand the product and the process, it became important. We grew into this new situation where it is appreciated a lot. So the disadvantage in the beginning of expensive labor becomes an advantage now that people really like the ID that we make it here. We design and make our products here and out of ourselves. So the transparency of that became something which is important now, because the world developed from only producing, aware in low labor cost countries and as cheap as possible, and without any transparency to a wish to buy products and ingredients where you do know how and where it's made. But in 1990, nobody was thinking about this and me neither. I just like to do it like the way I do. Was it difficult splitting up with NOB in 2015? Yes, that's always difficult. I know because it was necessary. We worked together at that time 30 years, it was a very long friendship and it's still a friendship which I'm very happy about. It was difficult because it was a friend but it was also necessary because of the same reason. He was really unhappy. At a certain moment, I asked him, "Nob, I'm doing almost everything and you seem to do less and less. What should we do about it?" Because this can't go on and he said, "Just that's true, but I'm so unhappy." And at that time, we tried to change it but it was impossible. The company grew in a direction and I grew in a direction and our relationship developed in a way that was not repairable anymore. And now, after almost seven years, I think, next year, seven years. So it took some time and now we're better friends than ever I might say but at least he found his own and new way after the split and that takes time. That's again something. If you ask, "After one week, how is it?" Of course, it's shit. But after a few years, then it becomes better and better. Yeah. Can we talk about your background, Pete Hain, your parents and grandparents. We're all teachers. We never tempted. Yeah. I like it. Yes, I've tried at the Design Academy to teach one time for one trimester and actually it was wonderful. So I really loved it. But I never had the time afterwards. I actually feel now that maybe at this moment, I'm not able to do it like at that time, but maybe not. I have some problems at this moment with internies we got and so on. I stopped with a lot of internies because I didn't feel the connection anymore between the young people now and then it's not in general but on my working here. It's about like a professional attitude. That's interesting. So what's changed? So I don't say it's changed, but in my experience over the last years, I couldn't get the students in my path, in my way of working. And I thought and I think that if you have an internship or an internie, he or she should learn where I'm good at. You know, you're not coming here for something which is not something which is important here. So I always say to everybody, if you are an intern here, you should be open and willing to not be too much focused on concept and design because I assume you're able to do that because that's your study. But more the process after it. So you have an idea and you learn how to realize this idea because that's where we're really good at. There's a whole factory here. Everybody is able to think and help you to think about problems, help you. I'm good at that. So the focus should be after this idea, which is not important, how can you make this? And if you get into this process the way I try to get people in this process, you start thinking differently because you start understanding what it needs to get to a good product. And it doesn't mean this is the way to design, but at least it's my way and I can teach people my way. And I found out that at a certain moment that a lot of the internies and students were looking at their laptop as if there was an answer in it. And I said you don't need a laptop, you need to have an ID and then just think about how to make it or maybe turn it around, think about how to make something and have an ID. But stop seeing like the laptop and internet as a starting point for design because it's not here and not in this internship. And it became more and more difficult to get people from this attitude towards information. So a lot of education or institutes say you first have to get informed and then they start looking at internet and look at all the possible chairs and then they, but it ruins the creative process because you see what's already done. And if you want to make something new, it's not so clever to look at what's already done because the chance that you take some of those ideas is almost 100 percent because even if you don't know, you see something, you use what you've seen. So I don't like this way of working. So I stopped because I was not able to break through this habit. We were good students yourself, we were good at school. Well, I was the rebel. Not as a cause. Well, there is a sense of you treading your own path. You know, going back, you showed with Drogue in what's now considered that hugely influential show in Milan in '93, but your work was slightly different. I mean, you've said in the past, you were keen to make products that actually worked, whereas maybe some of your contemporaries were more interested in overtly conceptual design. Why did you decide not to hitch yourself to that particular wagon? Yeah, we started with the doors covered in a museum, which was one of the first designer exhibitions in Holland. We also showed at Art Faire's, our designs, in a very early stage, they had to discuss whether or not it was allowed at the Art Faire's. Is this art or is it design and should we allow it? That's a change. So we started actually on the path of art design or how you had a mind to word, but at that moment, it was not as clear as it became later that there was so much money to be made in this field. So easy, but I always saw myself as an industrial designer or maybe better manufacturer designer. So I wanted to make a collection as affordable as possible for as many people as possible. So I actually, I still focus on affordable products, although it's impossible in Europe, I think. I designed with the idea if I do almost nothing, at least it becomes affordable. So using as less hours and means as possible in order to make something which people could have like the crisis collection and some ceramic lamps and the light collection is actually quite affordable. But at the same time, the world proceeded and we were sort of catched by it. And I made like the scrap wood series, which were to use as much possible hours, which are expensive in order to throw away as less as possible material, which was worthless. So you don't gain anything in bed. And this became quite an expensive series and it became very successful. And then we added a longer steam of exaggerating hours, more and more products. And now, Now this is one of the major parts of the collection, is the more expensive part. If you look at the turnover, the improvement in it is totally because of the highly expensive products. So you didn't hit your ride with droog because you were wanting to make at that time, not inexpensive, but affordable, practical products. That was your ambition. Yeah, and they didn't sell that well. They communicated a lot, but we had a contract, which was called a sales contract. I stopped it because they didn't sell. So I said, "We have a contract, and above it is sales, but you don't sell, so I stopped the contract." Of course, this was not meant like that, but they approved. So I stopped because they were making a lot of publicity for Dutch design, but it didn't fit in my ID that I wanted to have design, which actually sells and is made. Of course, a lot of design is in the world, is communicated and everybody is talking and looking at it, but it's not selling. I was trying to get to make a collection, which could be the starting point for a company with a production facility. So I needed people to sell it and not to talk about it. Well, talking about companies that sell furniture. I mean, you've collaborated with other manufacturers. You've designed a beautiful watch here, as a clock, speakers for left, which you've mentioned, for example, and you've created glasses and flat-pack furniture. How do you decide who you're going to work with in those kind of projects? Normally, it's because there is a connection with an individual person. As soon as I have a click with somebody, I actually don't mind that much about the company except when it's really wrong. But I like the idea of working with people. And that also means with the people for whom I make a design, so like a royalty design. So they make it. But I really think it's important that there is like a click, an intellectual click with those persons. So it's like with IKEA. Yeah, there are Aaron Gustafsson. Yeah, there I worked with Kevin and it was wonderful. So we still have each other in and where we can we meet. And this has been a beautiful friendship. So it was just a personal thing it wasn't about getting your work into as many people's houses as you possibly could. Or combination the two. No, no. No, no, it was really caring. But in the end, I learned a lot about this project with IKEA and also about our own way of producing and what they do and it was really nice to collaborate. And it's still open. So we still have contact. So probably one day there's a new design for IKEA if we keep in contact. You said in one of your books that you got the sense that people in the Netherlands didn't really approve of you working with the Swedish company described it as a kind of showvinism. What did you mean by that? Maybe it's in the translation because I read everything in English also but sometimes the English is different from the Dutch and I wrote actually this book in Dutch. I know that it was also one of my own problems or might have been it wasn't in the end but IKEA of course produces very big and a lot of people think it's the footprint of what they do is wrong. I think the major problem with me working for IKEA is that I'm a designer making designer products on a very high level and IKEA is a much lower level people say or level at least the market they reach for is much lower or more affordable all over the world. So more democratic and mine is less democratic and actually this has been one of my goals from the beginning so for me it was interesting to do it and I don't know the showvinistic thing I recognize it a little bit I should read it again in the book. But I don't think there's a problem with the Dutch having a problem with me designing for Scandinavian for Sweden. So I don't think that's the problem but there were a lot of things happening at that time but I felt it as a very positive thing and we didn't have any problem in the process either. You've worked in a panoply of different materials with aluminium copper, PET bottles, ceramics, oak, rat and glass. This goes on your own restaurant at hotel. Is it frustrating that people think of you as a scrap wood guy? Because you prefer welding right? I read that you prefer welding and metal. Yeah to do myself yeah. If I have to choose to work I prefer to work it with metal because yeah this is nice. I love metal working with metal. First I was a little bit scared and annoyed about the idea or about the fact that people if they think about me they think about scrap wood. But in the meanwhile we've been working for almost 30 years or at least 25 and I actually make with a lot of materials, a lot of different designs. So it doesn't stop me or prevent me from doing a lot of different things and maybe even it helps me. So first I was annoyed because I was a little bit scared that people wouldn't accept the other work and now I know that it gives me the platform to do what I want. So it's okay. It's not true but it's okay. One of the other phrases that comes up a lot is you'll need to feel a fishing water. You describe it as you need to feel I guess at home. And to extend that matter for I wonder if the studio you're now in is your perfect fishbowl? Yeah. This has actually to do with the story we had about failure and success which if you take it as a starting point it's very difficult to improve. If you take failure and success as a starting point or as a way to balance or to judge over people it's difficult. But if you create an environment where people are happy and where they like to collaborate and where there's nice goals and good working environment you know that the failures will be less and the successes will be more. So it's a way to be both more happy and more successful without knowing whether or not you are successful. You're never secured by these kind of things. Everything can happen but at least it's the best possible starting point. So I always try to create this world which for me and the people around me where everybody feels good and that's I think that's the major goal and then the rest will come. That's a lovely lovely lovely place to leave it. Pete Heijn, thank you so much for your time. I wish you every success in the future. Thank you. You too. And to discover more at Pete Heijn's work go to peetheijnek.nl. 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