Alain Gilles was born in Brussels in 1970. He studied political science and marketing management and spent five years in international finance before returning to study industrial design in France; he opened his studio in late 2007. His practice covers product and furniture design, art direction and scenography, and in 2012 he was named Designer of the Year at Interieur Kortrijk. He describes his approach as "simplexity": simple objects that are more complex than they first appear. For Varaschin he designed LINK (2015), a table built around a metal link that structurally reinforces its wide-angled wooden legs, offered in rectangular, round and extendable versions with tops in wood, HPL, stone or marble. CUSTOMADE (2023) draws on the dolmen, a horizontal slab on uneven supports, and is made to measure in die-cast and extruded aluminium, with 33 sizes adjustable in one-centimetre steps and an extending version.
