Dries Otten<\/a> would open both windows of his bedroom in wintertime and, in the cold, paint himself into a trance. That love of painting would lead Otten to earn a master’s in art restoration. “But it was terribly boring,” he recalls. “And the better you were at your job, the less visible your work.”<\/p>\nNot content to simply preserve the creations of others, he went on to a master’s in interior architecture and eventually opened his namesake studio, focusing on bold, colorful kitchens composed rather like abstract canvases. Allusions to De Stijl, abstract expressionism, and Memphis are apparent. A 1920 geometric mural, for example, inspired the painted backsplash of the kitchen in a house in Antwerp. His favorite color, a mid-tone gray-blue, he describes as Le Corbusier in feel. “We exist in a continuous line,” Otten says. “To me, it would be weird to design without referencing history.”<\/p>\n