12.20.24
Fair Report
Now In Its 24th Year, Dutch Design Week Remains One of the Best Places to Scout Playful, Innovative Objects
In its 22nd year and featuring more than 2,600 designers over 120 venues, Dutch Design Week continues to impress us. Our favorite objects from Eindhoven this year delighted by building upon history and what has come before — both in terms of personal memory as well as a collective — while also presenting surprising innovation, and, in many cases, a sense of playfulness. Below were just a few of our favorite exhibitions and pieces.
Paul Coenen
Eindhoven-based designer Paul Coenen teamed with BWB Surface Technology—whose services are typically sought out by the industrial fields of medical, aviation, and global commerce—to color anodize his pieces through a shrink-wrap process, achieving the appearance of a diffuse, swirling sun print on the cold hard, architectonic aluminum surfaces.
Lisanne Meester
Lisanne Meester debuted her aluminum “Core” collection, featuring Judd-esque, rectilinear shapes in varied and versatile sizes with custom lacquered core panels that could be used variously as stools, side tables, coffee tables and more.
Show Not Show
De Kruisruimte, a cultural center boasting studios for artists, musicians and designers, presented “Show Not Show,” with the impetus of pulling back the proverbial curtain to show not only finished products, but the process of creation as well. Frank Pender’s contribution included his new furniture collection that seemed to take a cue from Isamu Noguchi’s famed sheet metal sculptures drawing from natural shapes and experiments in the surface patina of steel from the 1980s. Pender’s “StepSlide” took a Noguchi-esque playground approach, adding the flourish of a slide to the opposite end of a set of practical looking stairs. Meanwhile, the dramatic angles and torquing of a single sheet of metal for his “ONE Rise” chair recalled the curves and implied motion of a Futurist sculpture.
In Search Of
Ae Office
Bureau Parso
EOB
Hun Lee
Myeonga Seo
Seojun Yun
Sheyang Li
Sunhyo Mast
Teo Rhe
Walter Mingledorff
Curated by Jung Pyeori at Albert van Abbehuis, the former residence of the Van Abbe family, who played a major role in the cultural development of Eindhoven, “In Search Of” specifically tasked the included designers to link cultural or personal memory and our lived environment. Helmed by Berlin-based Hee Choi and Myungnyun Kim, AE Office’s whimsical table chair and rocking chair extrapolated on the Zierblende, the decorative panels and trims commonly seen on the exterior of traditional German buildings. Once a unique, handmade product, the panels can now be found in any hardware store in Germany. Fascinated by the contemporary mass production of a former handicraft, AE Office applied the etched, beveled, and chamfered edges in red and white color ways. Combined with the deliberately chosen forms of the retro school chair-desk combo and rocking chair, the objects invoked Hansel and Gretel, cottage core vibes.
Based in Rotterdam and founded by Ki and Heon, EOB’s contribution to “In Search of” combined unlike elements to create a fascinating and unexpected collection: a spare but evocative shelving unit reminiscent of a clothing drying rack borrowed from the wooden airplane glider wing kits of yore, while a stark wooden chair inspired by an overstuffed lounger from the duo’s childhood appears more like an ultramodern church pew prayer kneeler or a pair of low lecturns placed across from each other. Meanwhile, Eindhoven-based designer Sheyang’s coffee table and chairs treated molten and liquid metal like play-doh, fashioning his pieces from what appeared like globs of aluminum, bronze, brass, copper, steel, and silver.
