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)

2 months ago I got an email from a friend who wanted to write an essay about hysteria on design. he is from spain and also a designer. guillem ferran asked me to send him some informations about maxime ansiau, a dutch-french designer. he saw a picture of his work on matandme. I’ve send him all he needed and now his article is printed. he compilated different works of studio job, wok media, maarten baas, martino gamper, maxime ansiau, ted noten, atelier van lieshout and jerszy seymour.

yeah, guillem! but is there an english version? my spanish isn’t that good.

d[x]i is a quarterly publication devoted to creativity, visual culture and contemporary art making. you find subjects about industrial design, graphic design, interior design, photography, illustration, art, architecture as well as other cross-media disciplines. d[x]i is a 100% experimental platform which goes beyond the limits of editorial work, generating an independent environment in which different viewpoints of contemporary culture converge with up to date information.

another media conglomerate is launching an award. sony presents a photo award for professionals and amateurs which will be presented from the 21st – 25th april in cannes, france. the good part is that they also have an university shoot out. in this competition you will see two students from each of the 10 participating countries from europe. the assignment was to sum up your country in one image. here is one picture which was choosen to be presented in cannes.

germany – ‘sum up your country in one image’ – black – red – yellow!!

sebastian müller and jan-philip welchering are students at the university of applied science and arts in dortmund, germany. sebastian is studying photography and jan-philip graphic design. the funny story is that jan-philip actually wanted to sign on photography but he made a mistake in the application form and end up in the graphic design department. not sure if it’s destiny, maybe, but it was just a stupid slip. what doesn’t bar him from taking good pictures.

jan-philip welchering + sebstian müller

the ‘mustard’ collection is hanging in the kitchen

that’s how the massacre started

that’s how it get out of hand

last year I attended at the k2007, world’s largest plastics trade fair, where basf presented the new kontstantin grcic chair. we just have seen some miniatures and the process of designing the chair. on this year’s designweek (salone internazionale del mobile 16.-21.4.2008) in milan konstantin grcic will launch myto at the triennale design museum.

my minitaure of the myto (sadly, I got it in orange)

and as we know chairs let a designer heart beat. they are the icons of design. ludwig mies van der rohe, one of the most outstanding architects, designed one of the first cantilevered chairs in 1927. once he said that it is easier to build a house than to design a good chair.

mies van der rohe – cantilever chair

marcel breuer – cantilever chair ‘cesca’

check the post from last year:
http://matandme.net/myto-chair-debut-at-the-k-2007/

| plank | – client

today some fine art students and me participate in a workshop from the jan van eyck academy, post-academic institute for research and production fine art, design, theory.

we were invited by reserachers from different disciplines. theo cowley, donatella bernadi, jean-baptiste maitre and société réaliste were our tutors for one day. we had to bring some of our work and install a group exhibition in one big room. the challange was to put the work in a different context, outside of our academy, in a white cube. would it have the same impact like in the own studio? can I present my work everwhere? how can I present it to make the intention clear. after evaluating all this questions (and more) we observed that working with people from diffrent disciplines broaden one’s mind. learn from and with others.

the exhibition space

jean-baptiste maitre + leonid babiichouk

jean-baptiste naudy (société réaliste) + students

marie-claire krell talking about her ideas for her graduation

mitja devaud showing a short film via his camera

matandme is everywhere