At Dutch Design Week, 17 Designers Turning Everyday Materials into Sculptural Furniture

It’s Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, and we’ll be publishing a round-up of our favorites first thing next week. But for the second year in a row, one of the best exhibitions on view came from the young trend-forecasting and design firm Core Studio, who last year curated the colorful exhibition Popcore. This year, the theme was HARDCORE, and the curators asked participating designers to create works exploring “a counter-digital movement.”

The exhibition is divided into three parts: Monumental, i.e. “objects that have a high sculptural and autonomous presence that is inescapable;” Hyper Ordinary, or “finding new value in objects that are normally perceived as ordinary;” and Aesthetic of Efficiency, otherwise known as a way of finding beauty in uncomplicated, less refined ways of constructing an object. On the Monumental side, Tijs Gilde’s “Gravel Table” is a pigmented mixture of blue stones that looks like a floor turned into a table. For Hyper Ordinary, Lucas Munoz’s “Tubular” uses architectural building supplies, or vents that look like they ought to be between walls, and builds them into futuristic-looking chairs. And for Aesthetic of Efficiency, Wendy Andreu and Bram Vanderbeke created a tapering double pyramid from aluminum, using a construction system that requires neither screws, rivets, nor welds. Check out the rest of these ordinary materials reinterpreted in the images below.

Above: Hans van Sinderen & Fabian Briels