Blog: Lace Map — Joanna Cho

A Design I Couldn’t Leave Behind in Bruges:
The Lace Map
Jan 10. 2026

It is already 2026, but I still think about a design I saw during my trip to Europe in December 2025. When I took a gap year, I worked on a UI/UX project in Korea with Olivia, who later went to Leuven, Belgium as an exchange student. So I included Belgium in my Europe travel route, and we decided to take a day trip to a small town called Bruges.
Bruges was small and charming. It felt like traveling back in time. The medieval Gothic architecture was so well preserved and inspiring that I had to stop and take hundreds of pictures.

As we visited several souvenir shops, one thing stood out everywhere: lace. Olivia explained that lace is well known in Belgium, especially in Bruges. As we moved from shop to shop, I began to feel that these pieces were more than decorative materials; they felt closer to artworks.

Then, a large white map installed outdoors caught my eye. As I walked closer, I kept asking myself, could this really be lace? I kept hoping it was. And thankfully, it was! The largest and most beautiful lace piece I have ever seen.

Lace is something I had always associated with fragility and delicacy, something meant to stay indoors. Yet here it was, firmly installed outside. Through the small openings in the lace, the buildings behind it and the blue sky became part of the piece. This allowed me to see lace from an entirely new perspective.

Although I also traveled to Paris and London, this lace map stayed with me throughout the trip, not only because of its visual beauty, but because someone had made the bold decision to create a map out of lace and install it outdoors.

As soon as I returned home, I searched for this work and found out that it was designed by Chris Kabel. He is a product designer, but much of his work is created for public spaces. What I found interesting was how well his other designs aligned with the impression I had from the lace map. His work is clean and minimal, yet always has one twist that immediately draws people in.

This piece led me to research the history of lace in Bruges. I learned that lace was not simply decorative, but a form of labor chosen by women for survival, often described as “from the poor for the rich.” There is even a lace school in Bruges that still teaches the craft today. Knowing that such beauty carries a history of labor and survival has stayed with me.

The website mentioned that the lace map might be available for sale upon inquiry, and I can’t help but wonder how much it might cost. This work stole my heart more than any artwork I saw at the Louvre!