Frank Buschmann
Frank Buschmann (1969-Pinetown, South Africa), artist / craftsman.
Trained as a industrial designer and cabinetmaker. Of German origin, currently living in Galicia, Spain. He spent his childhood in South Africa and Nigeria, his adolescence and education in Germany, where he studied cabinetmaking at the Karlsruhe School of Crafts. In the Netherlands he studied Industrial Design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, where he has been later teaching in the Master "man and humanity".
Frank argues that the mastery of a trade is a carrier of tools exemplary for the sustainability of the future. Being a master of a trade is not reduced to the virtuosity of handling some techniques but also supposes a long learning to recognize and cultivate specific attitudes and values. With this approach, Frank intends to recover and maintain the knowledge and practice, not only of the traditional techniques and processes of cabinetmaking, but also its values: patience, intuition and the search for perfection. The virtuous management of techniques goes through the learning of values and attitudes and, all of them, he considers, are universal tools needed to deal with the complexity of the future.
Professionally, he started his career in production linked to industrial design, working for Job Smeets, Hugo Timmermans and Piet Heijn Eek. Later he specialized with his own studio 24h-living in exhibition and spatial design, developing proposals among others for Lille European Capital of Culture, ED-Awards (European Design Awards), the Design Academy of Eindhoven or Matadero Madrid, where he was part of the founding team of Intermediae (2006- 2012), a public Institution, dependent of the city council of Madrid, for contemporary artistic production
Buschmann has designed and produced events, galas, caterings, exibitions for private and institutional clients in the Netherlands, France, Spain and Japan
In 2011 he founded Wudthing.eu, to launch a series of "low-cost" furniture of industrial production.
Since 2012 he is dedicated to the recovery of the traditional craft of cabinetmaking
He opened his own workshop in 2011, first in Madrid and then later moved to Corcubión (Galicia).
In 2019 He received the Galician crafts award for the project "Monas"
In 2020 he received the Antonio Fraguas Fraguas award for the chair "Samba de una sola nota".
Buschmann has developed and produced a wide range of works, colaborated with artists and designers, produced reproductions as objects of study, own designs and specific pieces commissioned by private and public clients.
worth mentioning are the new confessionals for the cathedral of Santiago in colaboration with architects Luis Gil Pita and Cristina Nieto or the new plenary table of the city council of Corcubión
Buschmann has shown and communicated the approximation and work to a wide public through exhibitions such as the collective "Da árbore a cadeira" in 2017 in the City of Culture of Santiago Compostela or individual exhibitions such as "made of stars" at the RAC Foundation in Pontevedra in 2020 or in 2021 in the Gallery Álvaro de Alcázar in Madrid, which also presented his work in varios editions of Arco Madrid.
Buschmann has produced a documentary together with the audiovisual producer Juan Alarcón to show the traditional work process in this trade. It is called "A good work" which has been exhibited in different contexts.
In the field of training and education, Buschmann has shared his knowledge and experience in the context of crafts through workshops and conferences in Universities such as ETSAM (Escuela Técnica Superior de
Arquitectura de Madrid), the ETSAC (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de A Coruña)
or the CA Institute (Compostela Arquitecture Institute) and in training centers of Arts and Crafts such as the CIFP Someso in A Coruña, the EASD in Ourense and the Fundación laboral Santiago de Compostela.
In the context of Design Buschmann has taught in the master program "man and humanity" at the design academy Eindhoven and at the IED madrid