Wood Firm De Coene and the Modern Office

Abstract In the course of the twentieth century the Belgian wood firm De Coene, established in the late-nineteenth century, underwent a thorough modernisation. The company started off as a family business that specialised in art deco interiors and the importation of wood from the Belgian colony of the Congo, but quickly developed into an industrialised producer of cutting-edge modern furniture and building materials. This article explores the context for the Flemish company’s various innovations and products in the decades after the Second World War, in particular De Coene’s new headquarters, built on the factory grounds in Kortrijk in 1964. It approaches the building and its furnishings as valuable objects of study to increase our understanding of the changing perceptions of wood in the context of the post-war industrialisation in Belgium, the gradually liberalising European market, and the country’s changing relationship to the Congo.