Netherlands A Gulf; A Commonwealth; A Context In the course of his great many letters to his pupil, the Rotter Dam aan Maas, letters in which are contained the earliest known descriptions of the provinces that comprise the contemporary Netherlands*, the ancient scribe Oranje Tulpenbol of Old Amsterdam tells how there once existed in those provinces two antagonistic tribes of native Meubilairers: one occupying an area sited roughly between the contemporary Den Haag and Apeldoorn, the other
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Modular lighting is a seldom encountered genre, and when it is encountered, then invariably in a very technical form, a form that implies the computer software has taken a greater role in the creative process than the designers understanding of form-giving, There are however exceptions..... 304 by Nick Beens, as seen at Dutch Design Week Eindhoven 2017 Although we saw the 304 collection by Nick Beens' at the 2017 Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Exhibition, it's inclusion here should in
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Although as an event Dutch Design Week has always had a focus on presenting design in context, design in practice, our feeling is that of late that focus has intensified, something we thoroughly approve of as it helps make tangible that design is, can be, more than pretty objects; does however mean that you increasingly need to take more time with you to Eindhoven. Or accept that you are going to miss a lot of, potentially, interesting and thought provoking presentations. Necessity meant that
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"Marcel Breuer seeing a pair of bicycle handle-bars decided to make chairs using the same industrial process", notes Jasper Morrison in his text, The Poet will not Polish, "the new world constructor seeing a pair of bicycle handle-bars decides to use them as they are and save himself the trouble and expense of bending the tube."* On seeing an aluminium tube, Eindhoven based studio OS ∆ OOS followed, in many respects, a similar logic. The result is the Tunnel collection. OS ∆ OOS @ Dutch
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As we believe we've noted before, the joy in that exhibition format in which designers present objects which are important and/or relevant to them, is that no matter how often it is repeated it is always new. Same, same, but different. For their 2017 show Dutch Invertuals are presenting collections of objects from 45 alumni which have an importance to/relevance for them, or which simply represent an object of wonder and inspiration to the relevant designer. And because it's Dutch Invertuals
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"October is the month of painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight" ‡ Before Henry David Thoreau's twilight comes, our five painted leaves, flashing their rich glow round the world from Nürnberg, Lausanne, Hamburg, Eindhoven and Barcelona. "On the art of building a teahouse" at the Neues Museum Nürnberg,
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Although one primarily goes to Kazerne Eindhoven to experience experimental, challenging, yet invariably accessible and pertinent design, during Dutch Design Week one also gets the chance to experience young, emerging, furniture brands. At Dutch Design week 2016 we were particularly taken with the presentation by Dutch brand Functionals. Tracing its origins back to 1972 and the establishment of a metal workshop in Goirle, near Tilburg, by Henk van Esch, the contemporary Functionals was
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It goes without saying that picking a "best of" from an event such as Dutch Design Week is impossible. Too varied are the projects, too wide the scope, too incomparable the works be that classic product design, classic architecture, classic craft, or more conceptual and/or research projects in and across genres. Rarely does urban planning sit so comfortably and naturally alongside pottery, high-tech and politics. While everywhere in Eindhoven one finds people 3D printing with all manner of
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Our five recommendations for new design and architecture exhibitions opening in June 2016 feature four in Germany and one in Holland. That's not our fault. That is the honest result of our open minded search through the programmes' of numerous global architecture and design museums. The following are for us the best five. We know the decision is subjective. But are sticking with our five. And thereby accepting the suspicion that we have specially selected them on account of where they are being
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Unbelievably, Eindhoven based design studio Daphna Laurens have never, ever, participated at Salone Satellite, that section of the Milan furniture fair devoted to young design talents. Unbelievably because they are unquestionably talented, and are equally unquestionably young. Even if the works displayed in Milan suggested a maturity beyond their years. Studio Daphna Laurens present Prototipi @ Salone Satellite Milan 2016 Presented under the title Prototipi Daphna Isaacs and Laurens
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May is traditionally the month in which the furniture design industry starts winding down towards summer.... fortunately, because after Milan all are flat broke. We took the opportunity to speak to Annemoon Geurts from Kazerne Eindhoven,view the Floris Wubben showcase Low Tech Crafts at DAD Galerie Berlin and wish English designer Robin Day a Happy 100th! The Poly side chair by Robin Day for Hille (bottom right), here with its contemporaries from Charles & Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen in the
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February 2015 saw us break new ground and make our first visits to Munich Creative Business Week, the magnificently monikered 's-Hertogenbosch in Holland and Ekumfi-Ekrawfo, Ghana. The latter albeit only virtually. Sadly. And Nils Holger Moormann used our pages to call for a revolution......... How We Work, new Dutch Design at the Stedelijk Museum 's-Hertogenbosch Dry-lacquer vessels by Chung Hae Cho, as seen at Tools for A Break - Korean Crafts and Design, Galerie Rieder Munich during
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We were first introduced to the work of Berlin based designer Uli Budde when we saw his "Reading Table" project at Designers Fair 2010 in Cologne. A delightfully simple object Reading Table combines table top and magazine/newspaper storage space in a manner that is as painfully obvious as it genial. An easily accessible, contemporary object the fact that no producer has seen fit to take it into production is one of those design mysteries which often keep us awake at night. Having begun his
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As we believe we've said before, and assume we will repeat in the future, contemporary Dutch design is largely, though not exclusively, about the research, and the subsequent processes invariably developed. If it leads to a product, that's good. But it needn't. That it however often does can be experienced in the exhibition Contemporary Creation Processes in Design on show at DAD Galerie Berlin. Curated by Berlin based, Eindhoven graduate Ruben der Kinderen Contemporary Creation Processes in
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As we noted in our post on the exhibition Open World at Kazerne Eindhoven, for a city that is often cited as the hub of contemporary European creativity, there isn't much on show publicly in downtown Eindhoven. Rather than being the bustling hive of vision and inspiration one may expect, the centre of Eindhoven is in many ways a textbook example of the sort of monochrome, backwater provincial town that could vanish overnight without anybody noticing. Save of course photographers who specialise
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Floris Wubben is a rare and precious being. Floris Wubben is a contemporary Dutch designer who didn't study at Design Academy Eindhoven. When we ask him how such a situation can arise, why he didn't attend Eindhoven, he smiles and replies that we're not the first to ask him that, everybody it seems wants to know. An indication of just how rare and precious a being he is. Floris Wubben does of course have his atelier in Eindhoven. Anything else would be far too absurd, if not illegal, and
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As a general rule, what you don't say is more important than what you do say: your body language famously sending discrete messages to those around you, messages which betray your feelings and intentions more eloquently and honestly than you ever could, or indeed would often dare to. Similarly, an inanimate object's body language also sends discrete messages which eloquently betray its intentions. An object's body language being more commonly referred to as its form and the functionalists
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As we've often noted/complained/mocked in these pages, for a town widely lauded as being the most creative in the universe, there isn't that much evidence of design, creativity or innovation to be found in Eindhoven. Or at least not in downtown Eindhoven. Go a little bit outside to the former Philips industrial estate at Strijp on the western edge of the city or the Sectie C complex to the east, and you'll find seemingly inexhaustible communities of creatives holed up like rabbits in warrens,
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Name: Izabela Bołoz Born: Wałbrzych, Poland Alma mater: University of Wrocław, Poland, University of Zurich, Switzerland & Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands Selected Work: Responsive Furniture Waiting Spot Shadow City Waiting Rooms Leaning Bench Intersections smow blog: To begin, our standard opening question, why the decision to study design? Izabela Bołoz: Initially I studied social sciences with the intention of following a "classic" career path in, for example, economics or the
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Throughout 2015 some thirty European museums and cultural institutions will mark the 125th anniversary of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh's death with a series of exhibitions, events and cultural exchanges. As previously noted, just as we have an innate mistrust of "lifetime achievement awards" for the living and lively, so to do we find "celebrating" deaths somewhat macabre. Especially in the case of Vincent van Gogh given the gory and tragic circumstances of his passing. But we famously don't
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For a town which, we would assume, boasts the highest density of designers in Europe, and which hosts one of the continent's more eclectic Design Weeks, Eindhoven in January is a very lonely place for the design devotee looking for an exhibition in which to wile away a spare afternoon. Fortunately those exhibitions which are running "out of season" offer enough substance to keep you curious, questioning and satisfied for many a January to come, exhibitions such as Matter of Life. Growing new
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Such was the quality of the new products we saw during our autumn tour they kept us going well into November; indeed it wasn't until a cold dank Friday in Chemnitz ahead of the opening of the exhibition Andy Warhol – Death and Disaster at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, that we even realised it was November.
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......and continued over Budapest and on to Berlin - where amongst other delights we partook of the exhibitions Sensing the Future: László Moholy-Nagy, die Medien und die Künste at the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin and Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum - and onto Cologne for the Orgatec office furniture trade fair.
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August being holiday month our principle focus was board sports: Woody Skateboards for the summer and silbærg snowboards for the coming winter. And when not trying to dislocate our virtual collarbones we found time to bring you an interview with Daphna Laurens and a warning from the colleagues at smow Australia.
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