"La Cambre focuses primarily on extensive research, often with a technique, material or product as the end result."
Noëmi Orgaer
Every year, MAD Brussels awards prizes worth 1.000 euros to graduates of the various Brussels creative schools. One of the winners of the MAD Graduation Prize 2023 is Noëmi Orgaer. She studied Industrial Design at La Cambre until last summer and has recently entered the job market. Wondering how she will use the prize to boost her starting career? MAD had a talk with Noëmi about her studies at La Cambre, her graduation project and her professional ambitions.
Can you briefly introduce yourself?
"I am Noëmi Orgaer, currently I am based between Brussels and Paris. This year in June I completed my master's degree in Industrial design at La Cambre. Before that I did interior architecture at Thomas More in Mechelen, followed by an exchange at Politecnio in Milan focusing on scenography and exhibition design."
You just finished your studies, what are your plans for the near future?
"At the moment, I am mainly developing my own practice. I work on various interior design projects and combine this with my individual work, which focuses on furniture and installation design. But I try not to limit myself too much to interior & furniture."
You studied Industrial Design at La Cambre, can you elaborate a bit on what exactly that course entails?
"Industrial Design is a 5-year study, it's a 3-year bachelor followed by a 2-year master. The study at La Cambre focuses mainly on extensive research. This often with a technique, a material development or a product as end result. Research is very central in this course." "La Cambre supports a lot of initiatives and encourages its students to do internships. I myself was able to go to Seoul for a 6-month internship. I did my internship at Spatial Semiology, a small studio that realizes interior designs, but also produces furniture. They also work on artistic projects and exhibitions. That internship was a very inspiring and rewarding period for me."
You won the MAD Graduation prize with your project Window Chronicles, can you briefly explain that project?
"During my internship at Spatial Semiology in Seoul, like many people in metropolises, I lived in a studio with one window that looked out on my neighbor's wall. Because of that experience, I started thinking about a lighting system that could help people in similar living situations still maintain a connection to the natural world behind their four walls. From that idea, Window Chronicles was born. In its natural state, the object automatically adjusts to the weather conditions outside through its connection to weather drones and the implementation of GPS coordinates. It is actually a bit the same system as that of weather apps. Those systems update every few seconds what the weather is outside. I applied the same principle to my lamp. Every few seconds it sends a signal to the weather IPA to see if there is an update. Those updates are linked to specific colors and luminosities, depending on the weather."
The MAD Graduation Prize is a 1.000 euros prize, what will you do with it?
"I would like to invest in a camera that I can do more research with. For example, for my project Window Chronicles, I sometimes rented cameras or asked for help from photographers like Tim Evers. Having the equipment on hand practically will be a big help for me."
What is important to you for your future professional career?
"That I certainly don't limit myself to 1 discipline, designing can be done in different ways. Also collaboration with others is something very important to me, with clients or other designers. So I definitely want to focus more on that in the future."