DUTCH DESIGN WEEK

After we arrived in Eindhoven in the early afternoon, we visited the van Abbe Museum. The exhibiton showed all kind of projects of art and design, like the darkest black, which absorbes more than 99 % of light and for example the Endless Chair of Dirk Vander Kooij. After that we visited some small workshops for building fornitures and art galleries in the backyards of Eindhoven. One of the most interesting exhibitions was the graduation show of the Design Academy Eindhoven. On three floors the students showed their final works, like the „Inside Out“ project, where the student Kathrine Barbro Bendixen uses 50 metres of cleaned inflated intestines for LED Lamp. The student Tamara Orjola showed with her project called „Forest Wool“ how we can give pine needles a second life. With standard manufactering techniques, like crushing, soaking, steaming, binding and pressing, they can be transformed into textiles, composites and paper. the first day in Eindhoven gave us a good impression of the Dutch design scene. We finished the evening eating dinner together at our accommodation.

 On the second day we went to the Strijp-S area in the morning. Especially the Klokgebouw offered a huge number of interesting design projects, like the „No Waste“ project of  the art directors for the Klokgebouw Reinder Bakker and Hester van Dijk. They tried to manage the whole exhibition without any wastage. To realise this ambition, the designers looked for waste flows and borrow materials from cooperative partners. Another fascinating initiative was „Fruitleather Rotterdam“: by creating a solution for one of Rotterdams biggest social issues, food waste. The project is leading towards our individual graduation projects. One of those technics is to mash, cook and then dry fruits to make them into a candy like piece of fruit called fruitleather. This material can be used in many different ways, creating many different products. Through this material they created a design bag made completely out of fruitleather. „Bricks of the future“ shows with its exhibition the material and process, which is produced with less energy and recycled materials. The students of the Academy van Bouwkunst stacked or assembled the bricks in an innovative way. This project encourages the thinking and making of new sustainable building materials.