Vincent van Duysen

In the past three decades Vincent van Duysen has become a quiet but important force in design through his minimalist yet expressive architecture. This book documents the source of his inspirations and ongoing laboratory: his own homes.

Considered to be one of the masters of minimalism, the Belgium-based Vincent van Duysen has had an outsized influence in the world of design, from the rarified echelons of high design to highly successful collections for Zara Home. Through the use of spare but beautiful materials such as bleached wood, travertine, and hand plaster, van Duysen has created a unique design language that is both monastic and sensual, brutal and elegant, primal and refined. He has been commissioned for large retail buildings, commercial interiors, as well as office towers and hotels, but he is best known for his houses. Uncompromising modern and endlessly inventive, his homes are both design laboratories and highly individualized. This is especially true of his own homes, the subject of this book. From his home in Belgium, where van Duysen has carved out modern spaces from a centuries-old former notary office, to his ground-up abode in Portugal, where living spaces flow between elemental walls-van Duysen carve residences with stone, wood, plaster, and light.

In collaborating with the photographer Francois Halard, van Duysen presents a truly personal vision of his own practice and point of view, where he becomes the architecture, and it becomes him.