Projects

Flawless
The film is set in 1957. This is one of my favorite periods for design and as such, I was really happy to get the chance to work as Set Decorator on this project. The Production Designer, Sophie Becher, liked how I combine colors and different textures and so she felt I could support her vision of the project. The story is about a woman who lives and works in a man's world of business in London. The film was directed by Michael Radford and was shot in both Luxembourg and London.

D:Qliq
A music loungebar situated in Luxembourg city. The place is divided into two levels. The ground floor is a bar and to me it also is the masculine part of the space. The second floor is the lounge and is also used for performances and concerts. The feeling is a little softer. I also designed the seating for this floor. The light concept was to work with LED lighting to highlight important areas of the space.

Tango TV
The assignment was to design three different stage modules for TV shows for the local TV studio. A news stage, music stage and talk stage were needed within a small amount of space, but with a lot of flexibility. All the sets are designed to move around with as little manpower as possible and there should also be the possibility to combine elements to form a new set. Every element gives the user the chance to use two sides and so creates more ways to change places for the modules.

Optik Lohmer
This is the concept and design for an optician's shop in Trier/ Germany. The shop is located in a house which has a very tricky shape to work with: very deep, but narrow. I therefore had to find a number of solutions to overcome space and daylight limitations while creating a very pure design. The exterior of the shop hat to look unique and stand out in the row of stores surrounding it: this was a challenge as well since the building is classified as a historic site.

George and the Dragon
The combination of a period and action movie was a new experience for me. Since the dragon in the film was added digitally in post-production, the art department had to collaborate closely with the CGI supervisor. I worked on set as a stand-by art director and also drafted a number of sets.

House of Boys
"The year is 1984. Frank is an 18-year old boy into dancing and New Wave music, who has just made his coming out.": Synopsis available on www.houseofboys.lu This film is about youth, freedom, adventure and the discovery of responsibilities in life. In the early 80´s when the world gets confronted to a new disease called AIDS. I designed a period farm house for the pre-shoot in autumn 2005. We will complete this project in the course of 2006.

Your chicken died of hunger
The setting of this film was a huge gallery in which we exposed 56 very disturbing art works. The budged we had was very limited: in order to make the space look much bigger it actually was, I mated corridors, corners and exhibition areas with L-shaped panels that were moved around according to the camera's angle. We managed in this way to create for example an entrance to the gallery with an extremely strong perspective.

Dog Soldiers
This film, written and directed by Neil Marshall was my first horror film, on which I collaborated with production designer Simon Bowles. We worked closely with the special effects crew, producing pre-rigged set elements for all the stunts. (collapsing ceilings and floors, bullet impacts in walls, action props for fights, etc...)

If not, why not?
This project was based on a choreography by Akram Khan. The peculiarity of the film was that the different sets had to interact with the movements of the dancers, and that each set represented abstract worlds, all very distinct from each-other. For example, I designed a Lycra° set which was in motion, changing size and shape according to the performance. Another set had turnable wall elements that director Daniel Wiroth was able to use for animation effects. The interaction of all these elements gives a very unexpected and strong quality to the film.

Golden Man
This was a historical thriller directed by Julian Temple. It was my second collaboration with production designer Ben van Os. The art department members worked on the particularly detailed and complex designs you can see in the above illustrations. The project was extremely inspiring to everyone involved. Unfortunately, the film folded only two weeks before shooting would begin.

Girl with a pearl earring
In the beginning of the project it was about research, research and research. Production designer Ben van Os is a very intense investigator and incorporates in his designs all the marvelous details he discovers. This made my work very rich and fulfilling. Ben van Os was nominated for the Academy Awards, 2003 for best art direction. I got the award for best artistic contribution as art director at the "Lëtzebuerger Film Präis", 2005.

Starfly
This is the second film I worked together with director Beryl Koltz. The story develops in 3 different time lines: It begins in the 60´s, then makes a jump to the present time. The third time line is the dreamed life of the protagonist: a fantasy based on his cartoon readings as a child. I have always been drawn to 50´s and 60´s design: this project gave me a great opportunity to conceive sets from this wonderful era.

Butterflies
Only close-ups are in focus. This helps us perceiving the spaces in the same way as Patrick the main character does: small, uncomfortable and sometimes claustrophobic. To enhance these feelings, the set design emphasizes on the contrast between blacks and whites, and shade and light. The director Max Jacoby received the UIP Prize for Best European Short Film at the Venice Film Festival in 2005.

Your name is Justyna
A critical, contemporary story written by the director Franco de Pena. It´s main setting is a large apartment in Berlin. In the story, this place has been abandoned and is mostly empty: to make it look interesting I worked with a technique based on layering different colors, textures and patterns and I put a strong accent on the aging of surfaces.

Elegant
The story is a sweet, heart warming and profoundly humane one. Together with the director and DOP, we decided that the set design should strongly support these qualities. Most of the story takes place in a small, old apartment: it is full of sundry, ancient objects which give it a very charming and friendly atmosphere. The new challenge of the design resided in the fact that the sets and props had to work both for 2D animation and for 24 frames per second shooting.

CQ
Roman Coppola´s film took place in the 60´s - one of my favorite design periods. What I mostly remember about this experience was the work of Mr. Dean Tavoularis which was "wunderbar". Dean designed all the sets in a very limited amount of time and on a narrow budget. The look of this film is very realistic and translates the spirit of film making during the 60´s in Paris. We built a space ship, the "Super-Car" and a moon-landscape on which Billy Zane as a revolutionary set up his organization to free planet earth.

Shadow of the Vampire
This was the first project in which I could explore the real meaning of production design. We captured the times of its story which was the "wild 1930´s" in Berlin; and portrayed a journey of its protagonists through eastern europe. The whole art department was very inspired by the production designer Assheton Gorton.

Autobahnraser
This movie was about teenagers an car racing. It was a great opportunity to gain a detailed insight into car tuning and car stunts.