I graduated at the design academy Eindhoven, department "man and leisure" in 2004. But I also trained myself all over the years in all sorts of "DIY knowledge". Concerning my design practise I find it important to be a self sustaining person, someone who knows about all basic needs and skills. How to produce your own food, how to design and make the table to eat from, to design and construct the house to live in, to understand about and act upon energy matters for example travelling.
I think that in the convenience society we are living in, this DIY knowledge has value. It´s almost a contradiction, the objects, products we use become more autonomous (for example: cars´s that decide how fast you go) But the users of products loose knowledge about the most basic elements (for example: lost knowledge about how a tomato grew on a plant).
I find this balance and contradiction of autonomy very interesting, and it is the starting point of my design process.