As an antidote to the immutable and unresponsive characteristics of our built environment and the objects around us, Simon Heijdens’ designs unleash a continuum of expressions over time, thereby multiplying the possible experiences we have of them and of the environs in which they are placed.

Born in the Netherlands in 1978, Heijdens first studied experimental film in Berlin before product design at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Since graduating in 2002, his constantly evolving body of work – from ‘Moving Wallpaper’ (2002) to the ‘3, Rising Slowly’ chandelier for Swarovski (2006) – reveals a fascination with narrative content and poetic exploration of time and place.

In Lightweeds Heijdens charts both the passage of time and the evolution of the natural surroundings through what he describes as “a living digital organism.” The computer generated and digitally projected plants respond to the actual sunshine, rainfall and wind as measured from the environment outside. With passing human traffic the willowy weeds bend, loose their seeds and pollinate to other walls throughout the space to create a constantly changing wallpaper, ultimately revealing the character of the space and it’s use.

As the plant’s behavioral patterns are derived purely from the collected data fed to the computer, a theoretically infinite universe of possible forms is provided and the randomness of nature is brought into the unnatural world.