Born on Halloween in 1978, Piet Houtenbos is a tried and tested New Yorker (unlike his enormous Dutch family) who earned his Industrial Design degree in 2001 at the Rhode Island School of Design. His ability to generate fresh ideas comes from a strong will to understand everything from the big bang to why manhole covers are round. He believes that design shouldn't be just for its own sake. Instead, Houtenbos wants to show people that just about anything has the potential to be better. He has designed a line of modern Scandinavian-inspired bamboo furniture for New York furniture showroom, Modernlink, and has a growing list of freelance clients including Bumble and Bumble, J. Walter Thompson, and Arthur Elgort. Among his growing array of stand-alone objects are his grenade oil lamps. Houtenbos has transformed actual US Army surplus grenades into playful objects with their once violent past juxtaposed against their present and future, as a source of light. Houtenbos currently works as a freelance designer.