Interior architect Stef Claes designs – with a great deal of international experience and passion for the job – timeless interiors and homes with rich simplicity, earthy tones and interesting perspectives. By constantly blending interior and architecture, he focuses on the experience and developed a powerful design language of his own.
Stef Claes lives in Geneva but has been realising projects all over Europe since 2014. From an early age, he tended to a career as an architect. He was inspired by the houses around him and was busy sketching ground plans and homes. Claes studied Architecture at the Sint Lucas in Ghent and afterwards travelled around the world to continue his studies, do internships and gain experience. His studies led him to Lisbon and Madrid, he worked for some time in Los Angeles at the agency that ran the John Lautner Foundation, he was apprenticed in Paris to none other than the Japanese master Shigeru Ban who is known from the Centre Pompidou-Metz and in Malaysia he worked on some hotel projects of the Aman Group. So the interior designer has a lot of international experience and a great passion for his profession and you can see that in his projects.
Timeless interiors and homes with rich simplicity, earthy tones and interesting perspectives.
In his designs, Claes always combines interior with architecture. This way he comes to his own personal architectural language because the designer doesn't try to pursue a certain style and just tries to do his own thing and be himself. "The human side of a design makes all the difference," he says. With simple but powerful colours and materials, Claes always creates timeless designs that are warm, rich, subdued and earthy. His many travels and other cultures are a great inspiration for his work, as is mid-century Modernism. The wishes and needs of the client are very important to Stef Claes. "As an architect you often determine how people are going to live, work, relax, eat and so on. So it's very important to listen carefully. The success of design is partly dependent on the relationship you enter into," says the interior designer. That's how he translates wishes into form.