ten tips for DDW 2015

Atelier Van Asseldonk drew inspiration from the cheerful dining scenes depicted in the paintings in the Augustijnenkerk, by Jan Steen and Pieter Breugel, for their attractive interior for the church. For the whole of Dutch Design Week this will form the splendid backdrop for festive lunches and dinners. This entourage is intended to resurrect the atmosphere of bygone days. You take your place at long tables, where you engage in animated conversations with the people sitting next to you, even though you do not know them. Checking your smartphone is strictly forbidden. The food is of the highest calibre, prepared by chef Dick Middelweerd from the restaurant De Treeswijkhoeve (2 Michelin stars) in Waalre. He prepares his dishes with regional products and even the flowers, which are here in abundance, come from the region. Everywhere you look you see exceptional and weird design objects, like a candle stick oxidized with urine. It stands happily in the middle of the dining table. Dinner costs 150 Euro including drinks and almost all the seats are reserved. But don’t despair, outside there is a market that is part of this Allegory of the South. Small dishes are served here, and naturally the traditional Brabant sausage roll is available.

Location: Paterskerk, Tramstraat 37
Open daily until 25 October, 11:00-00:00 hours

Huh, fashion in a football stadium? The world of testosterone, beer and football hooligans does not seem like the most obvious place to showcase avant-garde fashion. But as this year’s theme is sportswear, Modebelofte (fashion promise) curators Niek Pulles and Harm Rensink are very happy with the Philips stadium (PSV home turf) as a place to show work by the 42 (!) fashion designers they selected. Divided over six tunnels we see work from international up & coming designers from the London Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martens, the Dutch Rietveld Academy, ArtEZ and the Taiwan fashion academy – to name but a few. What do we see? Think walking ball pits, trousers with a sewn horse between the legs and a gruesome bright red dress made from silicon poured onto the floor that has subsequently been torn apart, which evokes associations with blood.

In Dadabase in the OXI exhibition Govert Flint explores a new revenue model for designers. A visitor’s face is scanned by a camera upon arrival, and age, gender and race are recognized by the software. The system can also detect the visitor’s emotion: are you surprised or shocked by a work of art or does it not mean anything to you? This data is valuable. On the internet, data mining like this is already applied on a large scale, but in the physical world not so often yet. And that while trend watchers would pay good money if they knew what visual language, style or colours were going to be popular in a particular section of the population. This research is on show at Sectie C, the sparkling incubator for Dutch Design Week, where 180 creative entrepreneurs, artisans and artists open the doors of their studios to the public. Pay the OXI exhibition curated by Justine Kontou a visit and contribute towards the designer becoming self-supporting.

Lidewij Edelkoort, possibly the most important trend watcher in the world, became the director of the Design Academy in Eindhoven in 1999. This was also the time when Philips moved its head office from Eindhoven to Amsterdam. But Lidewij appeared to be a game changer. She turned the Design Academy into a world-famous institute and the Dutch Design Week, in the former Philips factories, became an international crowd-puller. But Edelkoort left Eindhoven in 2008 after a row. Now she is back with an exhibition of her own design collection in De Kazerne. It has become design from another era, the time of art design or autonomous design, not the socially engaged design that predominates these days. It is more about art here than about functionality, with many chairs that are not intended for sitting. But it is a beautiful loving collection from by-now leading designers who were embraced by Lidewij as young talents. If you are in De Kazerne anyway, check out the 3D-printed shoes that are exhibited there. You can try them on too.  

Refugee crisis, financial crisis, climate crisis… The world seems to succumb to misery sometimes. Do you want to regain positivity and get the feeling it will be alright with the world: do go to the graduation show. 

How docile are you? Do you follow the crowds or do you take your own path? You are confronted with these questions the moment you come in. Three gates: above every gate there is a designer name. Do you go through the gate with the long queue? Or do you choose the gate you can simply walk through?

Algae lamps, fungi chairs and insect bioplastic – quite a lot of biotech has been on show at Dutch Design Week in the last few years. This year too, centred on the Veemgebouw’s eighth floor in the BioArt Laboratories exhibition.