M. Van Der Kley

Michiel van der Kley (b. 1962) decided to become a designer around 1987, after learning about 1920’s design, specifically the Bauhaus movement. By 1989, he was designing and producing furniture for his own company. He would later cease his self-production in favor of just designing, and secured production deals from leading furniture companies, including Artifort and Arco. Since 2007, van der Kley has been focused on designing products that create their own energy. This represents an ideological shift from merely designing beautiful things, to designing things that solve problems, be they of energy or environmental concern. For example, he created a sustainable material, a sort of plastic-paper that he used to make lights, originating from a local, biodegradable Nepalese paper and a special glue.