I’m Jörn Behage, an industrial designer with a strong vision on sustainable product design. “There are professions that are more harmful to the planet than a designer, but they are few.” This statement touched me in the 1980s and that was the starting point for me to reconsider the use of materials and product design. Growing up in Paraguay, I developed as a child a great affinity and insight into nature. The lessons I learned then are still a source of inspiration for my current work and view of the emerging circular economy. My international work has also allowed me to live and work in different cultures, developing a broad understanding of our current and future challenges. With Arapaha I want to express these insights and knowledge in a desirable lifestyle respecting the limits of our planet.
About Us
What we stand for
We believe a lifestyle in balance with our planet is possible.
We design and create in a different way, the Arapaha way. We combine science with aesthetics and make all our design choices to have a minimum footprint. All our products are fossil free. And we design to maximize the reuse of materials.
Enjoy, repair, re-sell, give away or return your Arapaha products. We turn them into new products. Over and over again. This is how we are fundamentally changing how the things you love in and around your house are made and remade.
Fossil free. Climate friendly. Closed Loop.
Arapaha
The word Arapaha means in Guaraní, an indigenous South American language, “where the world we can see ends”. Or in other words “the horizon”.
Arapaha stands for the beauty of what lies beyond the horizon, the world we are longing for where we live in balance with what our planet can provide. With our new way of creating products, we offer the world a new horizon, making real what we can now only imagine.
The Team
The Advisory Board
Huub
My name is Huub Steegmans and I’m an advisor to Arapaha. My expertise is in the legal field gained during the past 30 years as an attorney but mainly as a business lawyer in an international environment. I love to support entrepreneurial business opportunities, especially when they have a focus on sustainability. Creating solutions that lead to less impact on our natural resources and make our world a better place. Arapaha is such a company and it is great to be part of its sustainability journey.
Harm
My name is Harm van der Werff and I am advisor to Arapaha as a Principal Scientist. I am educated as Physical Chemist, because I wanted to understand the relation between our real world and the atomic basis of it. My passion is about understanding materials on molecular scale in order to improve their use and relevance in our real world. As the world is now, circularity and sustainability of polymeric materials is of crucial importance, and I like therefore very much to contribute to Arapaha.