Inside the Horta House, MORPHO Feels Right at Home

For architect Dieter Vander Velpen, a room isn’t finished until everything in it speaks the same language. His Antwerp-based architecture practice focuses almost entirely on residential work, where he can control everything from the structure down to the fabrics. That instinct toward total design thinking is what led him to create the MORPHO collection last April.

Developed under the umbrella of Tomorrowland‘s in-house creative group Great Library Design Studio, MORPHO trades in the festival’s usual maximalism for curved wood, patterned metal, stone, leather, and a lot of insect-inspired detail.

“From the beginning, the idea was to create a furniture and design collection that acts as an extension of the architectural language,” Dieter says. The collection was conceived with two scenarios in mind: one where MORPHO pieces exist inside a fully designed environment, and the other where someone buys one chair or table and it fits seamlessly into their own home.

“The challenge is to develop items which, when seen together, are a very beautiful continuation of a certain design language,” he says, “but when seen apart, they also hold up on their own as beautiful design pieces that work in different contexts.”

The reference points for MORPHO went back a long way. Dieter drew from a lifetime of visiting historical buildings across Europe, an archive of images accumulated over many years.

“With my European background, I’ve been discovering these buildings since childhood, visiting all the cultural cities in Europe and storing the images into the back of my head,” he says. “When you’re designing, you see how nature inspired some of these buildings. In the furniture pieces of MORPHO, this natural element comes through very strongly.”

The decision to shoot the collection inside the Horta House in Brussels wasn’t Dieter’s idea. It came from the museum itself, which reached out after MORPHO’s Milan launch last April. The conversation quickly led to a photoshoot inside the space.

Built between 1898 and 1901 as both the residence and studio of Belgian Art Nouveau pioneer Victor Horta, the UNESCO-listed Brussels landmark is considered one of the purest expressions of the movement. Every element, from the organic ironwork and flowing lines to the stained-glass light wells and custom-designed details, reflects Horta’s belief that architecture, craftsmanship, and decorative arts should be conceived as a unified whole, an ambition Dieter has carried into his own work from the beginning.

MORPHO was conceived with two scenarios in mind: as part of a fully unified architectural environment, and as individual pieces that hold their own in any interior. Photo courtesy of MORPHO

“It felt like a natural choice to create a conversation between Horta’s architectural environment and our MORPHO furniture pieces that were inspired by, and in the same tradition of, the nature-inspired furniture pieces of Victor Horta,” he says. “Just being able to spend a lot of time inside the house without visitors was super inspiring. It gave us a feeling of what it must have felt like to live there, to appreciate the flow, zoom into details and feel the materials better.”

Once the pieces were physically inside the space, the connection proved immediate.

“From the very first moment some of our colleagues were carrying the pieces into the building, everything clicked into place,” Dieter says. One shot in particular stood out: a museum candelabra placed on MORPHO’s Cena dining table, where the lines of the metalwork, the space, and the leg of the table resolved into a single visual language. “It was an incredible and emotional moment,” he says.

For the shoot, the team re-upholstered several pieces in fabrics chosen to correspond with each room, matching colors to materials already present in the house and landing on ochre and red tones. Patterns came from Elitis, Pierre Frey, and the studio’s own Dieter Vander Velpen x Zinc collection.

“We were looking for patterns that were timeless but have a little bit of a natural inspiration, where you create the illusion that these fabrics could’ve been used in the house,” he says. “We were very honored to put the pieces in such an important historical house. Once we saw it all coming together, I think we were quite happy and proud.”

He also sees the shoot as a creative milestone but as fuel for what comes next.

“It’s for sure going to be an inspiration when we develop the collection further,” he says. “It’s a reinforcing moment.”

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