As part of my grant, I proposed a long October weekend trip to Netherlands to experience Dutch Design Week. For years a friend has detailed innovative projects he sees each year, and it was time to see it for myself.
Eindhoven is city about 1 1/2 hours south of Amsterdam, and the hometown of Phillips electronics. It is also the epicenter of Dutch design, the source of much social design, and the home of Dutch Design Week. I was able to tag along with the Unravel the Code students and professors from MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) who go as part of the course every year (link below). My friend who recounted stories of Design Week is a technical assistant for this course. Unravel the Code is a course taught by MICA professors Annet Couwenburg and Ryan Hoover and encourages students to combine art, design, technology, with concepts to make works to address issues beyond the objects. At DDW week, the Unravel the Code students get to see work from artists and designers active in similar explorations.
3D Printed Steel bridge by Joris Laarman Lab and MX3D https://mx3d.com/projects/bridge-2/
Design Academy of Eindhoven
Eindhoven is the home of The Design Academy of Eindhoven, the source of some of the most innovative work I have seen in my research.
From Dezeen:
Students at the Dutch school (DAE) often produce highly provocative projects...The school is regarded as one of the most influential in the world and, where its staff and students lead, others soon follow.
Questioning Systems of Corporate Power: DAE student Ofer Kantor, Seed https://www.oferkantor.com/seeder
As part of DDW, the Academy’s recent graduating class presents their work, in this case class of 2018 both undergraduate and graduate students. It is a curated presentation, meaning the student’s projects have to pass muster to be shown. The students in the curatorial department curated and designed the layout of the show.
It is full of “what ifs” and “can I show you another way to look at a problem?” and many other questions, questions that went beyond the parameters of the object.
Below is some work from DAE with links and attributions where possible.
Designing identity: Doris Verlaat, drawing attention to the myth of normalcy with Normaal , questioning functionality and relationships between objects and what is normal https://www.dorisverlaat.com/kopie-van-one-potato-universe
Designing with chance: Carla Joachim-Godefroy & Jordan Morineau: MOCA; Technologies to questions the act of making: ceramics in the age of mechanical reproduction and chance (slip and dripping machine), order in the chaos
Designing communal events: Leif Czakai, Time Donke, Nathan Fordy-Bricnic: ways to bring people together and cook in a new way; communal events call for participants, each person gets a hollow brick to put their food in, it is stacked around a fire to cook, resulting in a group meal
Design as resistance: Anna Jensen, Basic Instinct-chairs designed so women have to sit in ways mimicking man-spreading, https://www.dezeen.com/2018/10/07/anna-aagaard-jensens-basic-instinct-chairs-graduates-furniture/; Elisa Otañez, Yellow spot-public urinal for women, https://www.dezeen.com/2018/07/09/yellow-spot-design-academy-eindhoven-portable-protest-toilet-elisa-otanez/; and Mariangela Beccoi's Lexicon of Everyday Exception - a collection of objects associated with protests around the world https://mariangelabeccoi.com/lexicon-of-everyday-exception
Design to examine nationalism: Thomas Stratman's Arson Archive created a visual documentation of acts of arson against newcomers in Germany each year from the fall of the wall to present day. Each house has a tag with the location and date of the act of arson, each set of shelves represents one year, with the overall effect being graph like, in the most poetic way. Really moving project, worth checking out the website: http://www.thomasstratmann.de/The-Arson-Archive
An array of projects from Design Academy of Eindhoven including MICA fibers professor Susie Brandt sniffing furniture made from manure (you couldn't smell its past life at all)
Beyond the Academy
Throughout the city of Eindhoven designers, artists, architects, urban planners, universities, non-profits, small start-ups, and many who defy categories showed their research and creations. Most were ready, willing, and able to enter discussions to tell you about their process and research. There was work from Czech Republic, Sweden, China, the Netherlands, Iceland, the U.K. and more.
Clothing and fibers based designs and experiments, including my first in-life Iris Van Herpen (row 3, center image).
Exhibitions take place all over the city, with DDW providing free bikes to borrow on a daily basis, to bike from site to site. A repurposed parking garage (Veem-one of my favorite display spaces), old industrial spaces, studios and galleries, outdoor plazas, and many other spaces were all transformed into exhibition spaces where the designers could interact with the public.
Material explorations from a variety of sources
Sectie C
Another favorite spot in Eindhoven is Sectie C, east of the city center.
From their website:
Sectie-C is a vibrant with studios, workshops, gardens, podiums, exhibitions and labs. A tight community of doers and thinkers where unexpected collisions trigger a spark that stimulates new creations. Freedom governs at Sectie-C, letting its residents create in an original and conscious way.
Work from Sectie C
It is a campus of low buildings that originally housed an electronics company. It currently houses a community full of artists, designers, non-profits, and small start-ups. The campus structure reminds me of abandoned strip malls in the US, and leaves me wondering if Sectie C’s model could transform these into communal spaces for artists who get pushed out of gentrified areas. For DDW, the outside spaces were transformed into social spaces including food, exhibitions, and demonstrations. The idea of social exchanges is not accidental in many of these spaces. It serves to create not just a fun, relaxed atmosphere, but one that allows for intellectual exchanges to happen.
A thread that ran through the work at Dutch Design Week, was the addressing of a concept beyond the object itself, that designers are not merely making a “cool thing” with unique aesthetics. The work pushed technologies or materials in the name of improving something: to create a less-wasteful fashion industry, to make traditional plastics obsolete, to draw attention to industries that poison the environment, to let women take up the same space as men (think manspreading), etc.
Some themes examined:
Materials: made from renewable resources (no plastic)-bioplastics
Smart materials
Systems to reduce waste: carpets made from Vlisco carpet scraps
Personalized: sneakers made to fit an individual foot
Technologies to improve/push possibilities
Drawing attention to social ills/empowering the disempowered
People/experiential focused (including health): sun ball, anti-smoking
Empowering people: robot bags!
Questioning systems: Dupont stickers
Questioning design rules/utility
3D Printing using bioplastic with an algae base developed by Dutch designers Eric Klarenbeek and Maartje Dros (I very much want to meet them and explore the material more)
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/12/04/dutch-designers-eric-klarenbeek-maartje-dros-convert-algae-biopolymer-3d-printing-good-design-bad-world/
3D printing technologies and smart fashion explorations
ROBOT BAGS!!! A collaboration between Dutch fashion designer and artist Bas Kosters and Makers Unite (both discussed in previous blog posts)
Links
Unravel the Code Course at MICA
Design Academy Eindhoven
Dezeen articles about various projects that are by DAE alum
Dutch Design Week
Sectie C
Sectie C facebook page
Dezeen’s article ranking Design Schools
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