Wabi Spirit

World-famous collector and interior designer, Axel Vervoordt was discovered by the general public with the staging of three mega-exhibitions (2007, 2008, 2009) at the Beaux-arts in Paris and at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, on the occasion of the Biennale. The encounter with the Far East and the friendship with the Japanese architect Tatsuro Miki, co-author of the present The wabi spirit, led him to redefine the ancient wabi concept.

Born in Japan in the 12th century, the wabi spirit recommends simplicity, humility, respect and admiration for the action of time on things, rejecting the superfluous, the artificial and the perfect to adhere to the essential, to the natural and imperfect, in the image of raku ceramics and the ancient tea ceremony.

The book takes us to Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Belgium, to the places that particularly inspired Vervoordt: relying on authenticity and the in situ recovery of materials, the new spaces he created respond to the most current research and trends of interior design, without therefore deviating from the wabi canon.

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