David Chicard, ex-CEO Sotheby’s Realty Belgium, now CEO of Collectible.House, which offers curated holiday homes, about life on the edge of his ‘Utrecht’ seat.
‘The first real armchair I bought was the ‘Utrecht’ by architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964). The piece of furniture was designed almost a hundred years ago, but has lost none of its strength. It remains a symbol of an era of revolution and experiment. The day I had the money for it, I bought the ‘Utrecht’. As soon as I got home, I watched it in silence for an hour. Since then he has accompanied me every day, both in Brussels and in Sancerre, France. I bottle-feed my daughter in it, my dog lies down on it to enjoy the sun, my friends sit in it for aperitifs.’
‘I look forward to giving ‘Utrecht’ a beautiful place in our new house, designed by Bruno Erpicum. And there are also ‘Utrechts’ in the Château de Sancerre, which we are renovating into a hybrid private hotel slash holiday home with 16 rooms. The wine from Sancerre is world famous, but hardly anyone knows the region.’
‘I wanted to be an architect since I was a child. I dreamed of Rietveld houses, of cities designed by Le Corbusier, homes by Charlotte Perriand or modular structures by Jean Prouvé. As forerunners, they experimented with architecture and furniture design, aimed at affordable housing for the general public.’
‘The standardized architecture in major European cities, including my home city Brussels. Mediocrity has become the norm. The mistakes of the past should help us to be ambitious, to transcend ourselves, to reinvent ourselves. Instead, we build with gray facades, with ceiling heights of 2.30 meters and with too little light or sense of space. That short-term thinking bothers me. Couldn’t urban development be more visionary and interesting?’
Tags: Collectible .House CEO David Chicard Mediocre architecture norm
