Weekly Pics: Dutch Design Week

Weekly Pics is a peek into the visual diaries of designers and design professionals. This time we travel to the Dutch Design Week 2017. Helsinki Design Week’s Marketing Director Petra Majander visited the festival, which was organized in Eindhoven 21-29 October.

The Dutch Design Week opening event was held by World Design Event and Design Indaba. The interactive platform Antenna presented international design talents and thinkers as well as the world’s best design academics. 

At Antenna, Marie Caye introduced SAM, a Symbiotic Autonomous Machine able to autonomously produce and sell soft drinks. We are becoming increasingly dependent on the qualities of autonomous machines and will have to co-operate with them more and more. We might have to start thinking about our reactions towards them. 

At the Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Show 2017, with the theme Mined, I saw these sympathetic ceramic sculptures that encourage one to fail and try again with no fear, made by Doeke Van Nuil.

The Dutch love cycling. Therefore it’s just logical that they design better, self-made and self-fixable bicycles. Nuyia Lindnar designed the 1-2L, in which all parts are connected – even the tools are integrated into the frame.

The beautiful Piet Hein Eek Studio was filled with design showrooms and pop-up studios. I also found the best bar in Eindhoven there.

The key topics at Dutch Design Week demonstrated how design plays a leading role in pushing technological innovation on the one hand, and stimulating human needs on the other. The Embassy of Robot Love features a “Living Lab” where robots and people share care, attention, love and sex. I got my first 3D-printed friend, InMoov. Other “embassies” tackled urban transformation, climate change, health, intimacy and future food.

For its city installation, the Dutch studio MVRDV built a playful hotel, made up of nine different coloured rooms that can be moved into different spaces. (W)ego was a concept for accommodation that can adapt to the different needs of any future inhabitants.

VDMA was a giant invitational exhibition including wood process studies, cross-stich works and floor knitting by Floor Nijdeken, and plastic waste which needs new ideas or designers.

I found the heart of the Dutch Design Week in Ketelhuisplein, where the People’s Pavilion was situated, designed by SLA & Overtreders W. The pavilion was made of recycled and borrowed materials. Other venues in Ketelhuisplein were the Embassy of Food, which studied future food and nutrition, and the playful Hihahut, an amazing adventure cottage village. 

The best of Holland: coffee and beautiful cafes, sweet meringue cakes and a growing bright creativeness that touches everything.