Here's our round up of Dutch Design Week, which took place between 17th and 25th October in Eindhoven.
As ever, there was much to see and many new and exciting ideas, materials and creative design solutions to ponder. Here's our swift round up. Watch this space for more in-depth blogs over the coming months.
The Temporary Art Centre Eindhoven hosted Trajectories: Future pathways in Design an exhibition that sought to 'make tangible where design is going.' Graduate work by students from Plymouth University and Hogeschool for Styling were shown alongside work such as Hatch and Bubblegraphy .
The latter by Studio Oddness involved a range of beautiful soap glazed ceramic vessels whilst Hatch designer Daniela Toledo has created a set of woven textiles that look to 'exploit the uncanniness found in the interpretation of tactile surface design in computer graphics' with patterns that mimicked those of Sand, Gravel and concrete as found in the digital software usually used by architects and designers.
As well as Thing Nothing the satellite show to the Design Academy's own graduate showing we also loved the show tucked away in the basement Time will change . Set up by Living Colour whose collective research looks at how colour affects interior design.
Curated by buro Belen there were elegantly arranged textiles, wallcoverings and rugs that explore how colour can change and age over time with in its surroundings mirroring the process we as humans go through.
Tessy Korremans pleated and stitched textile Extention is an exquisite example of this; when the folds are flattened after a period of hanging they reveal sun-bleached patternation beneath and a new aesthetic altogether.
As there were no home games fro PSV over the week the stadium was the dramatic backdrop for Modebelofte a showing of some of the very best graduate fashion design from around the world. Quite an experience!
It's always very difficult to choose but a few things from what is one of the most exciting and challenging shows of the year. We're going to cover a lot of the graduate work we saw over the coming months so for now we'll mention the monochromatically combative fashion range Print in Motion by Anouk van de Sande. Bright colour, dots and transparencies come together and to life when the wearer moves and causes optical shimmers.
Laurids Gallee's clever tabletop also caught our eye. It appears to be some form of highly precise and refined marquetry but is in fact created with laser-etched lines and a hand applied dye which Gallee has mastered so that it only takes to the correct areas without mixing or bleeding.
There were many varied and fascinating textile pieces on display but Adrianus Kundert Van Nieuwkoop's Ripening Rugs project left a lasting impression, quite literally. His dual colour rugs use contrasting coarseness of yarn and are designed to show signs of wear over time and with it new colour is revealed.
The Allegory of the S outh was a complete coming together of minds and ideas, with a 20 metre long 'still-life' created throughout the middle of the iconic and hugely impressive Augustine church. Part banquet, part installation and part product display the scene was jaw-dropping to say the least!
Set in the heart of the Strijp area In No Particular Order housed a selection of the 'newest generation of Dutch creatives' who were exposing the behind-the-scenes to their making processes.
There was a lot to take in! Not least one of the finest and most exciting examples of 3-D extrusion that we saw (a making methodology that we saw popping up everywhere) by Ricky van Broekhoven.
Solid Vibration was made in collaboration with Olivier van Herpt whose 3-D printer is manipulated throughout the extrusion process by a base mounted subwoofer. The resulting ceramic vessels thus render sound as a solid visual entity.
This year's awards had a 'social' focus with design from a broad set of categories, including product, habitat and fashion amongst others. Following on from the Endless Chair , Dirk Vander Kooij's RvR Chair got our overall vote. It's the first fully 3-D printed chair and uses 100% recycled plastic. Even with ergonomic arms it can be stacked, thus saving space, and is printed in a speedy 30 minutes flat!
There were also some new versions of one of our fav's The melting pot table.
Keep your eye's peeled for more information about the Dutch Design Awards and Eindhoven related blogs in the coming months.
