Get to know Urban Nature Culture & Anne Marie Hermans
Learn about Anne Marie Hermans in five pictures and an interview.
- URBAN NATURE CULTURE @ X BANK
- ANNE MARIE HERMANS
- DESIGNER HOUSE
- FAVE PLACE
- ATELIER
- Urban Nature Culture
Urban Nature Culture is owned by Anne Marie Hermans and run by a close knit team, which includes her husband. Everyone is dedicated to what they are best at and every decision is considered by the whole team. The company was born out of the idea that we all love having nice products but we care about the ethical implications of how they are made. They focus on using the right raw materials and honest wages.
2. Anne Marie Hermans
Anne Marie Hermans is the proud owner of Urban Nature Culture and truly the great mind behind it. She is inspired by her passion for the world, which she was partly born with and partly developed with her travels around the world. While traveling, she discovers beauty, people and production methods which she all combines in her new collections.
At the moment, Anne Marie is working on her newest project, which we are very happy to announce. Urban Nature Culture is collaborating with Renewi (a company who works on giving value to waste) and the Kringloop (the biggest secondhand retail chain of the Netherlands). Urban Nature culture is selecting secondhand porcelain from Kringloop, and Renewi developed a glaze made out of domestic waste (the waste is burned and becomes ash, from which they make a glaze). The selection of porcelain will be glazed with the recycled glaze. The result? A 100% circular collection.
3. Her own house
She is very happy and proud of her monumental building in the center of Amsterdam, where she lives on the top floor with a view over the city. Before becoming a monument, the building had quite a path. Originally, it hosted the office of a printing company. During the Second World War, it got confiscated by the Germans and afterwards it was occupied by squatters. Eventually, it got declared as a monument and it has a loft on every floor. The building has a lot of history and personality.
4. Anne Marie’s Favourite and Inspiring place
Anne Marie’s favorite place is UXUA, a hotel by Wilbert Das, Diesel Jeans’ former creative director. UXUA is situated in Trancoso near Porto Seguro, a small harbor town in the region of Bahia, Brazil. Porto Seguro means safe harbor is Portuguese, coming from when the town was a Portuguese colony and it was the harbor where slave ships arrived from Africa.
Brazil has always been a source of inspiration and a place where she felt belonging. When Anne Marie was 18 years old, she visited the country for the first time and fell in love with it. Afterwards, she lived in Brazil for five years. It was a formative period for her.
5. Where it All Happens: The Atelier
The atelier of Urban Nature Culture is situated in Amsterdam’s IJburg. They implement specific sustainable practices in creating each product. For example, their mango wood comes from mango trees after they’re not able to give fruits anymore. The trees that they use grow in Vietnam, India or Indonesia. Every product they make is completely developed by Urban Nature Culture. In the picture, you can see Ingeborg Roelands, head of design, at work.
