Jurgen Bey is a visionary designer who likes to take things to the next level. Bey is famous for his tree truck bench, with classical chair backs cast in bronze, his Light Shade Shade, a mirror lamp that reflects its surroundings during the day, and reveals a chandelier within once it’s lit, and his Ear Chairs, big armchairs with giant ears that allow people to have private conversations in public spaces.

With Prooff- which stands for Progressive Office, Bey explores new ways of working together. Work nowadays is too focused on making money alone, while, according to the designer, the emphasis should be on sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas. Part of Prooff is the slow car, now still a prototype. When the landscape in which we work is transformed into a collective campus, the slow car will be the mobile office in which we travel.

Jurgen Bey takes his time to observe our actions and to discover intrinsic qualities in things that are often overlooked. For this, he ventures beyond the ordinary and creates his own original path. A work ethic he would like to see companies adopt as well.

Dutch Profiles is a series of short documentaries produced by Submarine commissioned by DutchDFA about architects, graphic, product and fashion designers in the Netherlands.

Dutch Profiles focuses on the conceptual, context-oriented and research-based practice of Dutch designers and includes interviews with, among others: MVRDV, 2012 Architects, Jurgen Bey, Claudy Jongstra, Gerard Unger, Paul Mijksenaar, Marlies Dekkers, Alexander van Slobbe and G-Star