Dry Drying Rack by Sylvain De Bellis

Swiss designer Sylvain De Bellis was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1990. He studied industrial design at École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ÉCAL), graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in 2013. While at ECAL, De Bellis spent one semester as an exchange student at the Design Academy Eindhoven. After graduating, he interned in London for designers Philippe Malouin (September 2013 to March 2014) and Lee Broom (April 2014 to June 2014), where he gained real-world insight into the total design process, from conception to realization. He returned to Switzerland, and worked for a year as a junior designer at the La Chaux-de-Fonds-based industrial design agency Multiple SA, where he contributed to projects for commercial clients such as Nestlé. As of this writing, De Bellis is pursuing his Master’s degree in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London. According to the designer, his current goals are “to further develop, conceptualize, and challenge my practice and design identity, setting me on the path to opening my own design studio in 2017.”

De Bellis’s designs focus primarily on material exploration; he works frequently with metal, wood, and clay, testing and pushing the limits of these materials. Standout projects to date include Bounce Family (2012), a collection of containers composed of Lycra-covered steel that stretch and hold much more than expected; and Dry (2012), a sculptural, stackable drying rack made of four movable, colorful, thermo-lacquered steel components designed to adapt to today’s multipurpose living spaces. To date, De Bellis’s work has been shown at Les Arts Décoratifs (Paris 2015), Spoga + Gafa (Cologne, 2015), and the Royal College of Art WIP Show (London, 2016).