Dennis Parren

A graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, Parren says for him “luxury is a vague concept. For me camping can be the ultimate feeling of luxury: furniture that can be folded to small lightweight pieces; something you can carry anywhere to recreate a home wherever you want. I ‘squatted’ for 7 years. During this time I had to move my belongings several times and needed furniture to behave in a certain way. This inspired me to come up with the idea of a folding couch. It combines quality of comfort and the freedom of a camping chair.” Parren’s nomadic experiences prompted him to combine innovative design with new technologies as a solution for our times. His interest in 3D printing and LED has given him a fresh approach to design: a design based on reaction to colours, unstable conditions and basic comfort. Parren believes a light is not designed to show how something happens or why it happens, but rather to “show light as the true guardian of colour”. Thus a complex metal network can become a way to break up an LED light’s emissions to create an expressive game of projections around the object, starting from the object itself. Parren is  particularly known for creating radical objects. He doesn’t create objects to be looked at, but instead makes forms that have an effect on the environment, giving them additional value. He believes a light is always more than a light, a couch always more than a couch.  A key effect is a sense of surprise and unpredictability that the user gains through the object. Parren was nominated for the Dutch Design Awards at Dutch Design Week 2012.  His work has been widely published and he has developed projects with important design schools.