Carolien Janssens is a Swiss designer whose work creates connections between function and meaning, craft and industry, responsibility and aesthetic expression. With a background in mathematics, she likes to develop product families based on formulas and underlying patterns, then break away from them to make room for moments of surprise.
She thinks with her hands, feels drawn to the unusual and believes in the value of objects that have been carefully made.
Exhibitions
2121, Tokyo, 2027 [upcoming]
Milan Design Week, 2027 [upcoming]
Designblok, Prague, 2026
Designpreis ALTEFABRIK, Rapperswil-Jona, 2026
Lake Como Design Festival, 2026
Bestform, Bern, 2025
imm Cologne, 2022
Space Grotesk Basel, 2019
Design Festival Bern, supported by IKEA Foundation, 2019
Toni Müller Wohnkultur AG Muttenz, 2018
Designers‘ Saturday Langenthal, 2018
Awards
Designblok, Diploma Selection Finalist, 2026
Designpreis ALTEFABRIK Nominee, Gebert Foundation, 2026
Pure Talents Award Nominee, imm Cologne, 2022
Bern Design Festival Award, 2019
Swiss Cultural Challenge Nominee, 2019
Furniture of the Year Award, 2018
Young Talent Award, 2018
Basel Innovation Award, 2018
Swiss Design Association Bachelor Award Nominee, 2018
Siemens Home Appliances Design Award Nominee, 2017
No Drama is a series of meticulously handblown glass vases defined by their unusually wide bases. They convey a sense of calm and stability. No tipping over. No drama.
This first series was made for an auction at the annual Christmas market at ECAL.
No Drama is a series of meticulously handblown glass vases defined by their unusually wide bases. They convey a sense of calm and stability. No tipping over. No drama.
This series was produced for the BESTFORM exhibition, and funded by the Berner Design Stiftung . It consists of five different shapes with even larger feet.
No Drama is a series of meticulously handblown glass vases defined by their unusually wide bases. They convey a sense of calm and stability. No tipping over. No drama.
Each vase is made by encasing transparent or coloured glass in clear molten glass. The resulting transparent outer layer becomes a permeable boundary, reflecting its surroundings and visually connecting object and space. The wide bases reinforce this idea, spreading across the surface as if merging with it.
The series shown at Lake Como Design Festival explores this relationship through varying degrees of transparency, colour and density. In No Drama, the border is not a line of separation, but a reflective membrane where object and space seem to merge.