Het Lichtbed

© Ake E:son Lindman 2

The Lichtbed is a co-creation between architects 51N4E, designers Chevalier-Masson and Julie Vandenbroucke.

While they were in Paris for Christmas 2005, Julie and Michel had the idea to install a sort of daybed in the renovated house instead of the classical drawing-room furniture. They didn’t want an average daybed so it became a LICHTBED (Light bed). The architects created the concept. In 2010, after an intense five-year cooperation between the architects, designers and Julie, the Lichtbed was installed. This happened after a process of success and failure, discouragement and incredible dynamic.

© Interieur Biënnale Kortrijk

In the book Des choses à faire, architect Peter Swinnen looks back on this cooperation:

Without being pre-figured in its intention, the work done for the Lichtbed potentially comes close to being an ideal collaboration. How fuzzy can or should the collaborative process become? Can the designer ultimately disappear? In the case of the Lichtbed – and I am still not sure whether this is a good thing – the roles of the various actors involved became interchangeable. The client acted as a designer, the designer was engaged as a structural thinker, the architect remained something in-between – as always. The only certainty we allowed for was working on a 1/1 scale. So perhaps the real-life scale proved to be the collaborative lubricant? Is true collaboration only possible on a 1/1 scale? Here and now? Extremely urgent and never premediated? Is it simply a glorious accident?