by pure chance I bumped on sunday into alexander pelikan at the exhibition in the designhuis. he invited me to a meeting of design 22+2. it is a dutch initiative consisting of 22 designers and 2 supervisors, ann maes and richard hutten. they are showing cross-over activities, surpassing the idle concept thinking that dutch design is known for, and conceiving functional and most original products, meant to have a longer life cycle.

alexander pelikan and christian kocx were presenting what they experienced in indonesia. both had the chance to spend 4 months in southeast asia to work and find out what possibilities for the manufacture of products and designs are given. dutch design in development is the organisation which enabled this experience for the 2 designers from eindhoven. the indonesian are craftspeople. handcrafting has been performed for centuries. designing and innovation is what they are missing because they never learned it. peli and christian have showed us some great pictures about how good these people are with their hands and that there are opportunities of manufacturing and producing – a designer’s land of plenty.

ann maes and angelique spaninks (director mu eindhoven)

presentation about indonesian manufacturer pekerti

christian kocx and ingrid van der wacht (project manager brainport)

bastian leijh, maurice mentjes, arnoud visser, ann maes, annelies hermsen, alexander pelikan, christian kocx

yesterday was the official opening of the exhibition ‘fiets’ in the designhuis eindhoven.

li edelkoort, art director designhuis and chairwoman design academy, making the opening speech

single part installation

rico souren – chair: it was a bike before

goof van beek – bycicle tire chair

thijs bouman – bike caravan

jeroen bruls and krijn christiaansen – fence air

bike seats

fabian von spreckelsen – woodtrapper

professionals

international design competition by muji. entry period 1st july – 31th july. the 3rd muji award. a lot of japanese winners in edition 1 and 2. but what about the europeans? can we strike a goal? muji present an innocent idea which happen to be an innovation. the sock dilemma. discovery of czech grandmothers.

‘By expanding our viewpoints, we currently offer “Found MUJI” products, which were developed by discovering the good points about merchandise that has been used over long periods of time, were created by humans, and were born out of daily needs.
Take Comfortable 90 degree socks (Ashinari Chokkaku Kutsushita) as an example.We “found” that socks hand-knitted by Czech grandmothers were characterized by a 90-degree shape, which perfectly fits your feet. We tried them on and felt that they fit comfortably on our heels. We then discovered that the shape of the machine-produced socks we usually wear doesn’t fit our feet owing to manufacturing reasons. So then we realized that we could provide many people with comfortable 90 degree socks produced by machine. In this way, a factor found in Czech tradition, culture, and wisdom was converted to a new MUJI product befitting our modern age’.

last years winner:

downsize the towel with “further options” from a bath towel to a bath mat, and then to a floor cloth and dust cloth (my mum use to make a wiping cloth from everthing)

there is something about nadav kander‘s photos what gives me a certain good feeling.

4 days in berlin.

where is this creativity gone to?

max (something went wrong with his hair), raymond (best man at the panorama bar) and mireille (the painter with the whiskey voice)

bell – interdisciplinary art magazine + an exhibition in a box

kreuzberg ‘plattenbau’ view

lass uns freunde bleiben (let’s stay friends) bar – choriner straße 12 (prenzlauer berg) you can even buy a cigarette for 20 cent, served in a glass

the ‘photoautomat‘ city (unfortunatly I am not allowed to show the pictures we took inside)

don’t read it, just look at the cover

making the band

berlin youth

clementine treu, brooch

coming to terms with the past