it feels like the netherlands moved to milan. there is dutch design everywhere. and you hear a lot people talking dutch. we had great weather and some exciting encounters. here are the first.

the ghost collection – nhow hotel – 2nd floor, zona tortona

lonneke gordijn & ralph nauta – drift – presenting their ghost collection

bonjour! french designers in milano: olivier lellouche, julien demanche, najla el zein, nicholas daul and marcus fairs from dezeen

barbara kooij and barbara vos, promoting the royal dutcheese exhibition

sajoscha talira and paul timmer – 2 royal dutcheese, royal academy of art, den haag

mieke meijer, emely hermans and daphna isaacs – girls from eindhoven. presenting their work in a caravan

at the studio job exhibition. me and jeanne van beers, general manager of the designhuis, eindhoven

studio job exhibition. the gap between design and art – I love it

martijn ten bhoner, ivo stuyfzand, thomas de wolf, from tu eindhoven, department of industrial design

niels van eijk next to his blommy buddies. a work of him and miriam van der lubbe

caterina di lorgi and her collegue interviewing me for their blog – blogosfere

at the maarten baas party. good music, good people, great talk

.. it’s late. I am tried. we spend the night at the maarten baas party and had some drinks. I feel overloaded with design. I go to bed now and will post the rest in the morning…. lalala

last month, when I was in munich, I saw this intallation of the interior design department of the academy of fine arts munich. check out here: tie-wrap world.

and here is another jungle. but this one was an experiment. they build a giant handcrafted jungle as a group project with the product design and graphic design departement from the university of applied sciences in aachen. the challenge was: do it within 48h. you can find more information on the weblog. here are some facts:

48 hours | 14 groups | 56 participants

each team:
200 roof panels | 160 cardboard tubes | 180 cardboard boxes | 400 tie wrap (I love these) | 6 m2 amount of space for each group

the beginn

who are the design heroes? they are some creatives from aachen (you might ask yourself where aachen is. it’s in the west of germany, close to the dutch boarder). most of them studied product design. after their studies they were looking for a studio, some workspace. 3 of them opened the design at work studio/shop in the centre of aachen.

last year, at the ambiente in frankfurt, they were exhibiting their products. and because 4 designers from aachen were presenting their work (just 20 people from germany are getting some exhibition area) people use to ask if aachen is going to become the new design metropolitan. First sneered at, the aachen design heroes started to believe into it. now they are going to promote the idea in milan at the designweek. so watch out! – there is an olive scooter driving through the city. and there is a lot of tape involved. if you won’t be attentive you could be sticked to the wall. yeah, designmetropole aachen!

patricia yasmine graf, valentin derksen (trainee), julia graf, jürgen reichert, andrea derichs, daniel tsvetkov (trainee)

in the centre: fabian seibert

hm.. how can we conquer the world? maybe with scooters and tape?

or enter to the design world?

another must-see is that’s design. various universities and institutions are presenting innovative design made by students at the zona tortona. I would say another platform for the new creative generation.

phillip mann – stainless steel, granite, glassware, plastic bottle
rhode Island school of design

list of participants:

• university of art and design halle
• canterbury school of architecture
• domus academy
• hong kong design centre
• konstfack university college of arts, crafts and design
• lund university, Industrial design
• politecnico di milano
• accademia del lusso
• rhode Island school of design
• scuola politecnica di design
• british higher school of art and design
• strate collège designers
• unitec new zealand- school of design
• university college falmouth

superstudio piu’
via tortona 27

yes, I affect dutch design and moooi has some products I love, like the v.i.p chair from marcel wanders, the smoke chair from maarten baas or the horse lamp from the swedish front design girls.

marcel wanders v.i.p. chair

the great part is that moooi (mooi is ‘beautiful’ in dutch and the additional ‘o’ implys super beautiful) will also present his new collection on the designweek (16-21.4 in milan). I haven’t seen many sneak peeks yet. I just know that this hanging lamp, the sofa lamp, from culdesac design studio will be a part of it. to be honest, the lamp looks like a softish ufo. anyway I am looking forward to the rest of the new collection.

inspired by the iconic chester sofa – consists of a sculptural moulded polyurethane shel

sanaa from japan –
In my opinion a pick of the bunch of architecture!

zollverein school of management – essen, germany
architects: sanaa

here another scary moment of a knock-off:

villa garbald – castasegna, switzerland
architects: miller & maranta

I am up for the designweek. as you can see I already hang up the zona tortona board from last year. my former flatmate ‘accidentally’ took this board with her. it was all but on the ground. and because she is such a provident person she couldn’t leave the board alone…

If I give some thought to the zona tortona I would say that it’s the heart of the design week in milano. every year hundreds of companies, like abc, tuttobene, tom dixon, park, maarten baas etc. offer a preview of their products in all the locations of zona tortona district. there are some good brands and design to see and, of course, some stuff I would like to delete of my knowledge. but the area is full of design interested people and the ambiance is unbeatable. we should pray for last year’s weather now and everthing will be perfect in 2008.

some impressions from 2007

zona tortona ‘entry’

creative hanging around

tales from eindhoven crew

maarten bass

zona tortona guide

I am a constant reader of morf, a dutch magazine about design which is published by premsela, which is a platform for design and fashion. the aim of morf is to stimulate the students to think about their profession and their own future place within it.

I found this article in an old issue, no.3 – november 2005. ted noten gives advice. reading the article is more than a pleasure. finally I found my godfather. (check commandment 7)