During the Design Academy Eindhoven graduation show at Dutch Design Week, student designers presented different tools, products and methods to answer societal challenges today. Here are 10 of the top projects we saw.
Antishape
Anna Resei
With Antishape, Anna Resei questions what the role of the designer would be in a world where automated design is commonplace, and how much creativity a machine is capable of. Based on the principals of neural networks, the series of abstract interior objects were created combining digitally generated patterns with materials such as acrylic, glass fibre, textile and steel.
Photo: Pierre Castignola
Second-hand Archaeology
Barbora Stredova
Second-hand Archaeology is an upcycling service that forges emotional links between people and secondhand objects. Barbora Stredova takes objects from thrift stores and, discovering their pasts, applies their ‘stories’ onto them as a bold surface treatment. The intention is to make these pieces ‘wanted, valued and used’ again.
Photo: Pierre Castignola
Bursting Bubbles
Emma Lijdman
Voice communication technology powers Emma Lijdman’s Bursting Bubbles, an installation of stations that motivate strangers to interact with one another post-COVID. With the work – a collaboration with De Parade – the designer hopes to address the loneliness crisis and reintroduce spontaneous encounters.
Virtual Craft
Frederik Pesch
With experience as a cabinetmaker, Frederik Pesch became intrigued by the possibilities of ‘fake’ wood. Instead of working with HPL-clad plywood, Pesch opted to carry out two bench designs with steel, opening unlimited possibilities. The craftsman referenced the iconic Nakashima bench for the first and took cues from veneer sheets for the second.
Body Grafts - Skinned Furniture
Nancy Green
To bring Body Grafts - Skinned Furniture to life, Nancy Green imagined herself as furniture, peeling her taped body to make leather patterns that can be turned into objects. Infusing performance and humour into the furniture design process, Green asserts that ‘making needn’t be complicated and industrial – you just need five rolls of masking tape and a body’.
Photo: Iris Rijskamp
Unravelling the Coffee Bag
Rosana Escobar
Fique – an agave plant native to Colombia – was the object of Rosana Escobar’s study for Unravelling the Coffee Bag. The plant forms the fibers for coffee bags, and Escobar sought to trace the undervalued product back to its local context, highlighting the ‘missed opportunities of a standardized production line’. A series of objects showcase fique’s potential in other applications.
Industrial Devolution
Ruben Warnshuis
Driven to respond to the growing disconnect between consumers and manufacturing, Ruben Warnshuis set out to establish a workshop enabling people to weave their own shoes using ropes and moulds. Warnshuis explains that the low-tech initiative is aimed at helping us ‘learn self-sufficiency, expand our skills and material knowledge’ while inviting healthier relationships with our belongings.
Loving Objects
Sina Grebrodt
What if a shopping outing was a ceremonial event? With Loving Objects, Sina Grebrodt facilitates this transformation, using guided steps to ‘gradually bond’ with a purchase. Gredbrodt’s invention stems from the idea of ‘objectum sexuality’, and has visitors sign a ‘certificate of devotion’ in lieu of a receipt after taking time to learn about the object and its manufacturers.
Silo Living
Stella van Beers
Acknowledging the many tall grain silos that stand abandoned in the Netherlands, Stella van Beers envisions the agricultural structures functioning as two-level watchtower residences. In this concept, these ‘vertical human shelters’ would contain a living area, loft bedroom and lookout porthole. A toolkit of standard components would allow inhabitants to customize their space as needed.
Paradoxical Screen
Valentine Maurice
Psychological research into the digital screen’s role in establishing our sense of time, embodiment and social connection informed Valentine Maurice’s project Paradoxical Screen. It addresses the increasing cases of screen-related insomnia popping up among Gen Z, utilizing the psychology of the screen (with the help of biofeedback, neuroaesthetics and cognitive recognition) to calm people and prompt a good night’s sleep.
