As a designer, Bauke Knottnerus knows no bounds. The Dutch multi-tasker has been celebrated for his funky furniture, fashion arrangements and unique sensibilities with handcrafted objects and artisanship, but continues to defy both categorization and convention.

Merging his background in industrial and furniture design with a passion for fashion, Knottnerus created Phat Knits, a collection of colorful, giant knots with the dual purpose of entertaining and providing a place to sit. “I never really explained the Phat Knits project,” the Design Academy Eindhoven graduate admits. “People respond very intuitively to it. This is the closest you could get to having your very own Honey, I Shrunk the Kids experience.”

In the fashion arena, Knotternus also collaborates with Rotterdam designer Marga Weimans, whose second couture collection, “Wonderland,” was featured during the recent Paris Couture Fashion Week. “In my couture collections, I experiment with materials that are not typical for the fashion world, like polyester, tin, steel and building material,” Weimans says, confirming her compatibility with Knotternus’ own imagination.

Beyond these furniture and fashion forays, Knottnerus’ projects have also included deliberately broken pottery, sculptures (made from polyurethane casting resin filled with ferrero child surprises and lego) and conceptual interior design items such as a curtain printed with a photograph of an additional room. Between Phat Knit’s incomparable innovation, “Wonderland”‘s multi-layered, multi-textile aesthetic and a slew of artistic side projects, Knottnerus’ boundary-breaking approach is sure to pioneer a new attitude toward tactility and structure in the world of design.

For more information, see baukeknottnerus.nl.

—Charlotte West