Lida Baday designed the 15 below zero jacket to help homeless people through the cold. The insulation is provided by yesterday’s information: newspapers. To keep costs low the jacket comes without insulation but with an abundance of pockets to fill up with old papers. A temperature adjustable jacket that can also be worn as a backpack plus doubles as pillow.
Jan Vormann quietly goes about his task of repairing walls one Lego at a time. I assisted him in Amsterdam. For him holes aren’t eyesores but opportunities to add colour to the city. The event is part of Platform21=Repairing, that investigates repairing as a way of thinking, a culture in itself almost, designed to cater to short term needs of both industry, politics and society.
A plastic bag is not only watertight material, but also a visual expression of a brand. The King Suit by label TAZ differs from the Mother Theresa plastic bag dress because graphic designer Jonmar van Vlijmen manages to use the logo too. With this materialconcept TAZ creates objects with young designers of which the first outcomes can be viewed right now.
Which Dutch Design has concurred the world in 2008? The inevitable storm umbrella but also a surprising project: the Mahlangu handwasher. No conceptual fresh looking form as is expected of Dutch Design. Irene van Peer uses empty plastic beverage bottles. She has devised a clever method for turning these into hand-washing devices to help prevent the spread of disease in Africa.
Free samples and flyers are sooo boring. The sustainable wave has made space for more creative forms of advertising. Waterblasting makes green graffiti, a cleaning cloth reverses grafitti, then there’s snow tagging, growing logo’s and falling waterdrops that spell out words. You want it even if you’re no ecoist or ecoista.
Clothing by Berber Soepboer can in some way be altered or adjusted. The colouring dress has a black and white dessin, which can be hand-coloured by the owner. The assembly dress is a set of three dresses that can be taken apart and combined with a button-system. The dresses were on shown in Bergeyk in internationally renowned and sustainable textile factory De Ploeg.
Most Dutch people bring a shopping bag. A deposit for plastic bags has been introduced ages ago. I am all for making less consuming attractive and fun. French couturier Franck Sorbier has made a beautiful statement showing plastic bags are worth keeping. Outfit Mother Teresa is part of his autumn/winter 2008-2009 fashion presentation.
“Don’t design more thingie things,” says Debra Solomon. For DAMn magazine I interviewed her on food as culture. Like in Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking where local entrepreneurs join their flow of food and leftovers to create new products and extra profit, Debra thinks the future of design lies in creating networks. “Build platforms and systems, not things”.
Ward van Gemert likes to break things. Analyzing and arranging the parts brings him to a new re-use: reconstructivism. Exploded Chandeliers where the wire is also the backbone, a Stretched Table. His Exploded Chair shows an infinite range of new design originating from a standard canteen chair. He even managed a chaise longue by Corbu. Remember the Exploded formula 1 car?
Grandma’s oak cabinet. You love her, but hate the design. St. Joost academy in Breda graduate Ruud van Hemert makes precious wood into a new personal building material. Replex shows the old form in an new layered multiplex. Here’s a download of my article on him. We have an new and better Piet Hein Eek.
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