TJEP

"Frank Tjepkema is a designer but actually always wanted to become an astronaut. Not surprisingly, at a very young age, while other children were making their first drawings of flowers and bees Frank would be conceiving his first rocket designs. At first these were naive interpretations of archetypical rockets, resembling the one used by Tin Tin, but soon adults were quite astonished by the level of engineering and sophistication this young child was demonstrating. Frank was designing fully equipped machines neglecting no details. He went as far as to resolve problems like: how one would go to the loo when floating in outer space. His solution for this problem obtained him his first international patent with the RTD (retroactive toilet device). This resulted in a second place at the International Little Genius Trophy in '74. Frank had just turned four. When reading his first 'real' book at the age of six, The Little Prince from Saint Exupery, it wasn't without utter astonishment and deep disappointment that Frank was confronted with the fact that one could travel to the stars without using a rocket, nor a telescope, nor anything material. It is only much later that Frank came to realize the impact this revelation would have on his design work.While Frank was developing rockets Janneke Hooymans wasn't exactly playing with dolls! The first signs of her interest in design manifested at the age of three as she started building constructions out of empty milk pack's her father would bring back from work as a milkman. At first she produced very simple Mies van de Rohe type architectural constructions that soon became quite sophisticated, adding colors, and detailed textures that she would cut out of the cardboard. The milk packs made place for wood from the tree's her father would chop down, indeed, he was a lumberjack in his spare time. She hoped the tree houses would prevent her father from chopping down more trees. By the age of eight she crafted beautiful tree houses she liked to call dream machines, neglecting no details. The houses were conceived in such a way one could easily stay their a week without coming out of the tree thanks to an ingenious water collecting system based on morning dew. One particular tree house was so good it gained second place at the official 1982 International Tree House awards. The tree houses were popular with the neighborhood kids. They became their prefered place to hang out. The adults became quite jealous and frustrated as they couldn't fit in the houses, only getting to see and not experience how wonderful they were. Frank and Janneke met at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the 90's. In 2001 they officially joined forces as Tjep. in a common adventure aimed at adding quality, energy and amazement to the world.See résumé and the rest of this site to discover what happened next." to find out more...
Image & Passage from http://www.tjep.com/studio.html