Interior designers Claire Bataille (1940) and Paul ibens (1939-2020) worked together in the field of interior architecture for almost five decades. Through their joint design practice, established in 1968, they designed and realised countless homes, shops, businesses, furniture and objects.
The Flanders Architecture Institute acquired the entire Bataille & ibens archive in 2012. A selection of documents provides an initial glimpse of this fascinating and diverse collection.
The search for the balance between the smallest component and the greater whole has always appealed to us.
The result must be experienced afterwards as the evidence itself, as if the transformation had always been there.
We are not looking for trendy effects, but rather for the power and sensuality of space.
The direct link between the basic idea of the intervention and absolute control, right down to the tiniest detail, remains essential to us.
The temporality and fragility of interiors underlines the importance of the archive. By preserving plans, drawings, models, photographs, furniture and objects, this knowledge remains part of the history of interior architecture.
