Reuse and adapt: The keywords of 2024 Brussels design festival

September is design month across many European capitals and Brussels is no exception, with the city’s art scene coming to life for four weeks.

Brussels is abuzz for the annual Design September festival — with dozens of events and art exhibitions rolling out throughout the month.
Our report begins in Ixelles — one of the most vibrant areas of the Belgian capital — where we met Dutch-Italian artist Jacopo Koning. His exhibition at the Alto Galleria jewellery store is called ‘The Absurd Greet’.
Its grinning and screaming faces splattered on canvas and items of clothing, coupled with its apparently chaotic arrangement, seem to laugh at our hyper-communicative society where everything fights for a tiny bit of our space and attention.
Koning says his inspiration is mostly the avant-garde movement of the early 20th century.
“I’m inspired by Dadaism because it accentuates what’s completely random and connects it together even though it has no correlation. I like to place faces where they don’t belong”, he said. “Nothing is normal as it actually seems.”
“Because of the amount of information we get every day, I see the world as absurd. So I can only create things that for me are absurd and seemingly lack meaning,” he added. “But if you look at it intensively, everyone can find their own meaning.”
He was inspired also by friends and family for other works, such as the print seen below.
Other Design September exhibitions propose solutions to improve lives with objects designed for a very specific reason — such as an expandable wheelchair for children.
It’s called “Hugo” and was created by Czech designer Jan Kaděra to be more reusable and durable than ordinary ones.
“Unfortunately not every family can afford to buy a wheelchair every one year or two,” said Daniela Vervloet, cultural project manager at the Czech Centre Brussels.
Kaděra showed Euronews Culture an “innovative adjustable frame” that allows the wheelchair to “grow” with the child.
The Czech community has been very active during this year’s festival. The immersive installation seen below, create by Designblok, gave visitors a sneak peek of the upcoming Prague Design Festival – the biggest in central Europe.
“Reuse and adapt” are keywords for another exhibition — ‘New Ways of Living’ — curated by CityTools & Dogma.
Set in the iconic and historic Halles Saint-Géry market, it focuses on finding ways to live and build more sustainably by looking at solutions that can address the socio-cultural, economic and climatic challenges faced by European cities.
“The situation of demolishing and rebuilding, which is getting faster and faster, is a huge environmental problem,” said Antoine Crahay, urban developer and lecturer in future-proof real estate.
“What we actually need is to create buildings that are more flexible, and can live several lives and adapt to the needs of those who live in without being torn down every 20 years,” he added. “But in order to achieve that we need a basic regulation that allows us to create more flexible building structures.”
The design festival will return to Brussels in September 2025. Check out the video above for more on Design September.