During Dutch Design Week the Eindhoven based design platform Onomatopee is hosting an exhibition looking at ways of adding cultural value to raw materials.
In a time when raw materials are becoming rarer and our economic prosperity ever more dependent on the fluctuating prices of such, how can we disengage from this cycle and give these economic materials a cultural value?
Or, put another way, how can we use raw materials in an alternative fashion, that removes them from the economic cycle and places them in cultural cycles.
Onomatopee in collaboration with the Eindhoven workshop Beeldenstorm asked 10 design studios to explore this question and the results are on display under the title "Copy Nature #2: Elementary Sentiment"
And for all who aren't interested in the theoretical background to design research - which is fine, there's no compulsion to be interested in such - "Copy Nature #2: Elementary Sentiments" is a collection of some truly delightful and innovative objects presented in an exhibition space designed by Daphna Laurens.
Among those pieces that especially impressed us were "Nails" by BCXSY - a table and candle holder that employees a formed piece of brass as the linking element between pieces of wood; a bit like an over-sized, malformed nail - and "Mirrors" by Daphna Laurens - a piece of brass, a piece of aluminium and a piece of bronze with one face of each highly polished until it becomes a mirror.
While we really liked the exhibition and the works on display.....
If you're using such materials in such a context; then they become unavailable for their current uses. Or even more expensive. Which is then counter productive.
Which means we need alternatives. Or better alternative processes and new thinking so that the use of such metals becomes obsolete.
And so while "Copy Nature #2: Elementary Sentiments" unquestionably provides ways of adding cultural value to raw materials - it is only part of the discussion.
Copy Nature #2: Elementary Sentiments can be viewed at Onomatopee, Bleekweg, 5611VB Eindhoven until October 30th.
