Dutch design studio Makkink & Bey was founded in 2002 by architect Rianna Makkink (°1964) and designer Jurgen Bey (°1965). With their socio-critical and analytical approach of urbanism, architecture, landscape architecture and product design, they focus their efforts on the encounters and the tension between the private and the public spheres. They reflect in a fundamental way on the city, the public building, the home and the chair inside it, in order to methodically translate such concepts into new insights and examples.
The home as a continuous form of being in transition is their interpretation of the ‘Future Primitives’ theme of the Biennale INTERIEUR 2012. Their research has shown how as soon as we arrive in a place, we are immediately concerned with leaving it for a new destination. Such a nomadic mentality has a strong impact on mobility in general as well as on our social interactions. Being constantly on the move turns a residence into something temporary, which results in a whole range of new aspects of what ‘home’ and ‘domesticity’ actually mean.
At the Biennale INTERIEUR 2012 , Makkink & Bey show in their "house of the passerby " how industrial materials are becoming the frame of the house, and self-build becomes the norm. Domesticity becomes detached from brick and mortar or the value of the mortgage, but is rather concentrated with the social relations between the members of the group within the temporary and the nomadic aspects of the ultimate mobility.