SEP VERBOOM
With his label Livable designer Sep Verboom (°1990, works in Ghent) cooperates with traditional communities in the Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil. Together with local people Verboom creates projects in which crafts, social engagement, design and human contact beautifully merge. As these communities don’t have professional structures the final product is always unique. Beautiful examples are the FAN project (2014) in the Philippines’ Cebu City, for which he recycled the metal structure of fans and combined these with newly made rotan structures in lamps, and the Caro Barro project (2016) in the Brazilian Vale do Jequitinhonha, where he made ceramic vases that combine traditional local techniques with a contemporary design. Line by line Verboom also integrates this knowledge into industries such as Belgian companies Vincent Sheppard, for whom he designed the Aya-collection, and Papilio, for whom he designed the Rope Rugs. Doing so, he wants to realise his final goal: a social, ecological and qualitative revolution of the traditional industries. In 2018 Sep Verboom won the German Recycling Design prize and the Belgian Henry Van de Velde, Young talent Award.