DIRK
MEYLAERTS

After a short career as an actor/dancer in Jan Fabre’s theatre piece The power of Theatrical Madness, I decided I wanted to learn how to make furniture. I studied cabinetmaking at Les Arts et Metiers in Brussels and with a master cabinet maker, Ralf Hillenbrand, who taught me all the technical aspects of the job. After three years, I was able to start as an independent cabinet maker/designer, a career that lasted for 25 years. In 2003, I organized several auction sale events of prototypes by fellow designers, with the auction house Pierre Bergé in Brussels.

In 2006, I created D&A Lab, a company that produced limited series of functional design objects, imagined by contemporary artists such as Jonathan Monk, Pierre Bismuth, Ann Veronica Janssens, Koen Van den Broek, and many more. We were regular participants at Design Basel and Design Miami, Form London, etc..

In 2012, I was asked to become the director of production at the Fondation des Galeries Lafayette in Paris, a position that allowed me to collaborate with artists like Lutz Bacher, Hella Jongerius, Katinka Bock, Tarik Kiswanson, and Martin Margiela.

In 2020, like with so many people, the Corona pandemic made me reconsider my life project. I decided, together with my family, to leave the city and move to the French countryside to pick up again my old love, cabinet making.