A Bench with a Heart

During her master’s course in furniture design at London’s Royal College of Art, she was discovered by the store chain Habitat. She worked for them for three years, designing furniture and other products, meanwhile finding time to set up her own design range. By the time she got back to the Netherlands, Ineke Hans was no longer an unknown.

‘Seven Chairs in Seven Days’ was the name of the final exam project with which Hans, 40, earned her master’s degree in London. It was an inquiry into how people perceived chairs. "In fact, I spent much longer than seven days on those chairs," she says. "But I set myself a challenge: a chair a day, to capture ‘the essence of chair’. We’re all inclined to assign things a function so quickly. I remember a TV show several years ago in which people were given random imaginary products. In a flash, they’d attribute functions to the things. With this collection of chairs, I wanted to investigate what the fundamental elements of a chair were. As soon as you add a simple curve to a chair’s leg, it becomes a rocking chair. Essential iconic elements like that, pictograms that communicate the same thing all over the world, are something I seek out in all my work."

Products that speak to us

Herinneringsbank (Memory Bench) fits in with this philosophy. "I often choose for very direct communication: things that speak to people immediately," Hans says. "And I learned in England that you also have to make comfortable things. Not philosophical treatises – just comfortable, sellable furniture. After studying at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem, where conceptual thinking was still strongly in the foreground, I found that very refreshing. And ever since then, I’ve found comfort at least as important in a design as functionality and a good story."

While Hans was working in England, Droog Design was on the way up in the Netherlands. "When I came back, the climate here was wonderfully inspiring because of that," she says. While she feels an affinity for Droog’s conceptual design, she finds it important that designers be realistic as well, and strive to make things that work in the living room, she says. "It took a while before we became conscious in the Netherlands of the fact that all those great ideas had to sell, too."

But it’s not just the chairs that have to be useful: ideas, too, must be functional. "I don’t like to a chair to be covered in a heavy, James Bond, feel-good sauce," she says. "Sauce alone is no good, and theory and story by themselves are also often lifeless. I want the sauce to taste good and suit the dish. It shouldn’t be too rich. In other words, the product in its pure form also has to say enough. The product, the techniques used, the story, and the context have to seamlessly link up."

Careful concoctions

Hans cites her design of a school playground in the city of Tilburg as an example of a workable product with a sensible ‘story’. "When I came to the school for the first time, my eye fell on all those hard concrete elements, on the one hand. There were new buildings under construction, and more than anything that huge playground was bleak, cold and hard. Inside the school, however, there was a sultry atmosphere typical of developing 12-to-18-year-olds. That contrast between the hard concrete and the adolescent heart led me to the 18th century. Back then you’d see these romantic, awkward couples, the women in hoop skirts, walking through specially laid out lovers’ lanes in the woods, with branches you could peek through. I wanted to bring all that to the playground." The result was metal-frame trees surrounded by seat panels at varying heights. Each tree seats eight people, and they’re asymmetrical and mixed up, making for an overall impression of playfulness.

For her latest project, three lamps for Swarovski, Hans has immersed herself in the possibilities offered by new techniques and materials. She has also just made a lattice-back chair using a laser. "The nice thing is that the method allows you to suggest that the chair is handmade, since not all the cuts are ramrod-straight," she says. Whatever technique she uses, Ineke Hans’s philosophy remains the same: the recipe for the sauce must be concocted with care.