We wrote about TS 2 AS some moths ago, while the project was in a premature fase. Right now there up and running, and Parfois wants to support them. At this moment the TS 2 AS boys are gathering money to get to New York and have there first meetings. But for this to happen, they will need your support. Go over to the Times Square 2 Art Square website and donate everything you got! Its for the better purpose.

For those who didn’t know yet, the results of the competition ‘designing absence‘ are being shown in various exhibitions in and around Antwerp. The first one is running towards it’s end. Today is the last day to view the towers at the ‘designcenter winkelhaak‘ in Antwerp. we’ll update you about the other expo’s as soon as possible.

A few days ago, I was very pleased to discover Gilberto Esparza, a mexican artist, which is interested in making robots that interact with the enviroment. His last project, Plantas Nomadas, is a robot that works with the help of microorganisms and contaminated river water. The key for this process is the microbial fuel cells. According to wikipedia : “A microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a bio-electrochemilcal system that drives a current by mimicking bacterial interactions found in nature.[...] A microbial fuel cell is a device that converts chemical energy to electrical energy by the catalytic reaction of microorganisms.” Summing up, Plantas Nomadas is a self-sufficient robot that can walk to the river and drink contaminated water. Through a microbial fuel cell proccess, the produced energy feeds the robot and make it able to walk, while the surplus  helps the plants to grow. A great interaction between technology and life cycle.

I encourage you to have a look at his past project, Parasitos Urbanos, where small robotic creatures interact with the urban enviroment.

Both projects are nicely illustrated as well.

As a master-project I am organizing a competition round the Cathedral of Antwerp. In this concept architecture and sculpture gets merged together. The assignment embodies the disarming question: Design a second tower for the Cathedral of Antwerp. The given fact of a missing element in an existing structure and city-layout inspires to an autonomic completion for everybody. By organizing a competition or international brainstorm I would like to put the emphasis on the absence and by doing so emphasize the Cathedral itself. The contestants receive a picture of the Cathedral where they realize their design in a sort of overlay. I don’t want to exclude anybody, it will be a truly open competition. The results can be a 3D render, a ruff concept or a simple black marker drawing. The design can vary from inflatable structures to melted towers. I am communicating to all major European universities in the departements of Architecture, Graphic design and Visual Arts and true a large international cultural work-field. A selection of submissions will be exposed in a traveling exhibition and they will all be published (in the extend of the realizable). This publication wil showcase a big diversity of filled in absence and will function again as source of inspiration.

So start designing and submit your work! Right here at, Designing Absence.

Pieterjan loves girls, drawing and parfois. These three elements combined give a great advertisement campaign.

So in the future, be like Pieterjan; “Spread the Word!”

(pictures taken at Bazar Curieux, Rotterdam)

Since some time the Pafois Blog is linked to twitter. Every post published on the blog will also be posted on our twitter account. So if you want to stay up to date, subscribe to our twitter account using¬†this link. Parfois doesn’t only tweet the newest posts, you can also follow the construction of the new website, and catch a beta account if the new site is ready for some testing.

First things first, if you come here to visit our portfolio website, this is the place to go. If not, continue reading.

Dear Parfois fanclub, regulars and random visitors,
You’ve probably come here hoping to find our blog, or the Parfois Portfolio. As you can see, the blog has moved to the parfois.be homepage. From now on, parfois.be is the place to be! This will remain so until the new, completely restyled Parfois website is finished. Continue reading for some more Parfois news.

Parfois is being restyled. We have a new layout ready for you, but that’s not everything! As we were analyzing our website statistics, we noticed that there are a lot of visitors from foreign countries. Dutch is only spoken in a couple of countries which means that only a small percentage of our visitors actually understood what we were saying. We had to make a hard decision: Continue in Dutch, excluding a lot of visitors from our daily updates, or switch to English, the all-known international language. As you can probably tell by now, we decided to go for English. From now on, instead of just looking at nice pictures, you can actually understand what’s being said about them.

Of course, there’s a down side: Our Dutch spelling is impeccable and finding a spelling mistake was probably somewhat like finding Waldo at Woodstock. Unfortunately, our English isn’t nearly as good. So please, if you find any obvious mistakes, please let us know.
One more thing: Parfois is always looking for enthusiastic bloggers to help us. If you’re always up to date about the latest trends in art, design and the world, you might be just the one we need! Interested? Contact us at the following address: info@parfois.be