Awards 21

Johan Valcke was appointed director of Design Flanders in 1992. In that function he founded the Henry van de Velde Awards. He also founded the Design Flanders Gallery, the Triennials for Design and established the design magazine Kwintessens. He was elected to the Board of WCC-Europe and the Board of BEDA. Today, he remains active in the sounding board group for Design Museum Gent, the general assembly of HISK Gent and the purchasing committee of DIVA Antwerp. In 2018 he opened his gallery VALCKE Art Gallery.

Ronald Bastiaens is an Industrial Product Design Training Coordinator at Howest and a professor of industrial product design, prototyping, sustainable design, design methods, materials and manufacturing. He is also the team leader of the Howest Industrial Design Center and a researcher in the projects Protolab, Protolight, Design for Impact, Innowiz, myMachine and Pro-Fit.

Annelies Thoelen is curator at Z33. With a master’s degree in Art History and a PhD she started at Design Flanders in 2013. She is responsible for projects on Flemish design policy and is an international design advisor for the Creative Industries Fund in Rotterdam. She is a member of the editorial board of the ‘Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design’ and teaches design history and contemporary design at LUCA School of Arts in Genk.

Chris Baelus is a professor of product development at the University of Antwerp. He graduated in 1981 as an industrial designer from the NHIBS/Henry van de Velde Institute. After working as an independent designer for several years, he opted for education and research in product development. Since then, he has been affiliated with the Faculty of Design Sciences.

Francis Carpentier is the Curatorial Project Coordinator for the architecture and design programme of Bozar. As the exhibition coordinator, he was responsible for, among others, Ado Chale (2017) and Richard Venlet (2019). Francis trained in the Conservation of Monuments and Sites and serves on the boards of directors of the Horta Museum, Docomomo and Europa Nostra Belgium.

Wim Buts is a product designer and researcher and was head of the Product Design programme at LUCA School of Arts Genk until September 2021. He recently started a PhD study, “Design 4.0: a research into strategies for designers in the 4th industrial revolution”, in which he examines which new roles designers can take on and wants to discuss the abstract conceptual framework with the various stakeholders via tangible future scenarios.

Siegrid Demyttenaere is a founding partner, publisher and creative director of DAMN° magazine, and she heads an international visual communication agency, Waterproof. Siegrid Demyttenaere also carries out a number of private assignments as an art director and curator for companies and institutions, works as a design researcher and consultant and teaches at LUCA Ghent.

Max Borka was mainly active as a lecturer, journalist, radio producer and art critic when he became the director of the Interior Foundation in 1999 and co-founded DAMn° magazine. In 2011, he launched Mapping the Design World, an international social design platform. He also taught at KASK Ghent, La Cambre Brussels and Fachhochschule Potsdam and became the director of Berlin Design Week. He returned to Belgium in 2017.