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PAST
‘HANDLING MY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE STUDIO AS WELL AS
ALL MY EMOTIONS, WITH THREE CHILDREN IN DIAPERS AND NOT
A PENNY TO MY NAME: I WAS IN SURVIVAL MODE’My surname is Houben, but I think
I would have preferred my mother’s
last name, Cappetti. Not only
because I like it, but also because I
see how important she’s been for
me and the family I grew up in.
My mother was born in 1924,
the only girl in a family of six boys.
Her brothers were allowed to go to
high school in the city, but she was
sent to the housekeeping school in
the village. During the Second
World War, she was active in the
resistance, as were her brothers
and parents. She served as a
courier and cycled, eighteen
years old, from the east of the
Netherlands all the way to
Amsterdam (roughly 80 km/50
miles). After the war, she met my
father and they married and had
five children. I’m the fourth. My
mother never had an official job;
she ran the house and managed
the family affairs, and did so
with enthusiasm.
Because of my father’s work, we
moved a lot and she was the one
who always organized everything:
finding a house, putting contractors
to work, doing the paperwork,
looking for new schools. She wasn’t
one to watch our hockey games or
talk to the teacher if there was a
problem; we had to do that
ourselves. She was there for us
in a very natural way. It felt
safe at home. This contributed
to my happy childhood. I found
moving around inspiring: going to
new places and making them your
own. And because I was the fourth
child, I was allowed to do whatever
I wanted. I was the youngest
daughter and perhaps the apple of
my father’s eye, who was away for
business a lot.
As a child and adolescent, I was
a little naive—and I still am in ways.
If you know everything in advance,
you will walk around with an
enormous weight on your
shoulders, because you also know
what will go wrong. By the way,
I think today’s children feel that
more than we did. I can see it in
my own children. There is so much
more stress, so much focus on
achieving success. When I was
young and made the choice to
study architecture, it was not out of
an ambition to become what I am
today. I was ambitious in the sense
that I wanted to learn something,
but it didn’t occur to me that I had
to chart my life’s path in advance.
Or that I would later have a studio
that is known all over the world.
The early days of my
company coincided with the
most turbulent period in my
life. I had just given birth to twins,
already had a two year old, and we
had built a house shortly before. I
felt like the happiest woman in the
whole world. Then my partner left
me. My world collapsed; I hadn’t
seen it coming at all. We had beentogether for seventeen years, for
me the children were the crowning
glory of our relationship.
I tried for a long time to
understand the why of his
choice, later I gave up—or,
rather, simply accepted it is
what it is. I probably looked like
a wreck in those days, but I kept
smiling. I had my own company,
so I had to do well. Handling my
responsibility for the studio as well
as all my emotions, with three
children in diapers and not a penny
to my name: I was in survival mode.
But—especially in the first years—I
was really supported by my family:
by my parents, my brother and his
wife, a cousin who came to live with
us, and our neighbor. My children
were raised by an extended family
and that may not be the way I grew
up, but it’s beautiful and valuable
in its own way: it takes a village to
raise a child. >