As Stby looks back on our time at Dutch Design Week 2024, this article shares the key moments and insights from our visits. We’ve chosen a selection of images that capture the creativity and innovation we experienced. Each entry includes an observation and a resource for you to explore further. Join us as we highlight the designs and ideas that inspire us!
Power of design to create empathy and meaningful conversations around taboos.
Design project in Klokgebouw Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week
Design has the power to express complicated feelings and ideas clearly and engagingly. This is especially important for sensitive topics and societal taboos. Thoughtful design can help us understand these issues better and encourage important conversations about often ignored or judged topics. This project encourages mothers and daughters to talk about the transition into menopause.
Design can create a safe space for discussion by visually exploring these issues, prompting people to think rather than criticise. For example, graphic design, illustrations, and interactive displays can share stories that highlight the experiences behind the taboo. This helps people view them compassionately, breaking down misunderstandings and promoting open dialogue.
Using design to tackle taboos can lead to more awareness, understanding, and acceptance. It can turn silence into conversation, allowing for healing and growth together. By encouraging these discussions through design we help create a culture of empathy that values everyone’s story.
This is a project of the ‘Feminist Design Research Collective’. They are a feminist design research collective based in The Netherlands. They bring multiple backgrounds, disciplines, and stories to creative and provocative projects. You can find more on this collective and the project via https://www.feministdesignresearch.com/
Shared by Paulien
Collaborating in times of uncertainty
There was a lot of great work at DDW24, and it’s really difficult to pick out one example. But when I think back on all the things I saw, the installation by Foundation We Are comes up first.
They brought together 10 duos of a designer and a climate scientist, and left it to them to decide what would come out of their collaborations. During the course of almost a year, they all dove into joint activities and explorations. And by the time of DDW, a great exhibition and a publication were ready, both titled Collaborations for Future.
The exhibition offered a range of poetic installations, enhanced by an excellent audio tour. One team (Merel Witteman and Roderik van de Wal) developed ice creams made of seawater. These were shown in the expo and sold for consumption in the café.
The publication provides detailed background to the approach for this project, as well as reflections on the different types of collaborations that emerged. Leaving objectives and expectations for the projects open, resulted in very different dynamics and results across the teams. An interesting and well documented experiment.
Project website: collaborationsforfuture.com
Publication ISBN: 9789082941418
Shared by Geke
Designing with erosion
One of the designs from Dutch Design Week that stood out and has stuck with me in the weeks after has been A house of Salt by May Bee Design.
A House of salt is a structure that is made of large blocks of salt that dilute, melt and erode, constantly changing in size, texture and form. As May Bee Design describes the structure, it shines pristine white after every rainy day and it gets more translucent, sparkling and attractive with time until it starts to erode and decay and slowly fade away.
Many structures that we inhabit are built to last and it almost feels counter intuitive to consider building a structure that over time is designed to decay, particularly given the unpredictable and often extreme weather patterns of today. However, given the urgent realities of the climate exacerbated by our current built environments, this conceptual design challenges us to think how we can design with erosion in a way that fits into the cycles of our planet’s natural ecosystems whilst, simultaneously reconsidering our relationships with our own built environments. What would it look like if our houses died with us? In a film clip presented with the salt blocks, an audio narrative says:
“What would happen if our home accompanied us in our journey with exact spaces for each moment and gradually shed their leaves to die by our side. How would it be like to share the physical and aesthetic change of our own bodies with that of our home. Our white hair, first wrinkles and colour changing skin… Shouldn’t we challenge our design temporality? I want a house that is my old friend, one that I can trust, share and belong, until the end of our days.”
Shared by Sophie
The impact of designing with Heart
Though all of the design projects I will discuss were very different from each other, a red line connected through them and many others at DDW 2024 – the importance of emotions in design and everyday life.
Far From It
The first image was a project exploring the nostalgic emotions of objects after someone close to you passes away. The simple things we use everyday suddenly take on a new meaning. I find this an interesting “after-life” element for designers to think about when they are creating objects: What might this mean to those left behind? What stories might this object take on beyond its purpose? The emotional layer of product design here was fascinating and heartwarming/heartbreaking.
Redesign Psychiatry
The second image was from the Design Innovation session about how designers can collaborate with social scientists on the crisis of mental health among young people in the Netherlands, though this is a problem seen in many other parts of the world too. This session explored how in-depth knowledge about this complex topic and a creative design approach can work well together to come up with new interventions in a more timely manner than academia or the government can typically do. Emotional health is imperative for a functioning society, making it an important new theme for designers to actively be working on. I appreciated hearing about the project ‘Mental Gymnasticks’ from Redesign Psychiatry that brings emotional education into primary schools through creative activities.
RAYONNE
The last image is related to this topic in a more abstract way. If you’ve ever been to Dutch Design Week, you know how incredibly inspiring but also exhausting it can be – taking in a million stimuli and being on your feet all day long. This installation placed on one of the main outdoor squares at DDW was exactly the emotional reprieve I needed during this long day, making its mark in the “design for emotions” theme I was noticing (whether it was meant for that or not). Made out of a former hot air balloon, this fabric moved in a way that calmed the whole nervous system without even trying – emulating ocean waves or floppy pine trees in the wind. The protective barrier at the body level contrasted with the bright sky above made it feel like a safe hug. I believe in the transformative power of these kinds of public space interventions that also attempt the goal of emotional well-being in a different, more subtle way.
Emotional education in design
These reflections made me think about how designers should have more emotional education in their design studies and beyond. This could be through formal courses in psychology or through more informal methods like attending sharing circles or reading books about these topics. To spread this message, I will leave a few of my favourite books on human emotional life:
- Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek H Murthy M.D.
- Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown
- When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté
Shared by Katy
Voices of the Earth: The Unique Human Response to Climate Change
One of the installations in the Collaborations for Future exhibition mentioned above offered me the opportunity to have a nice speculative chat with a climate scientist. I spoke to Vassilis Daioglou, who does Energy Modeling and Scenario Analysis at PBL (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving, the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency.
We discussed the question: Why are humans the only species on Earth protesting against climate change? At least, it seems so. We might miss some protests of other species because we are not sensitive to them, of course. Yet, with our extensive knowledge of life on Earth, we have only seen adaptation of other species, not protest. Vassilis suggested this has to do with the lack of a sense of culture and history that non-human species have. I was not sure: Some animals do give each other names (chimps, dolphins, whales), which we have learned by now, which seems to be a sign of both culture and history. But they do not protest as far as we know. It was an intriguing question and a great conversation.
So thank you for setting this up performative designer Myrthe Krepel, inspired by your collaboration with climate scientist Pieter Pauw.
Shared by Bas