Tafelgenoten (Table Companions), Caroline Wilcke; Morning Glory, Wendy Legro
During Salone del Mobile (April 14-18 2010) Design Academy Eindhoven presents ‘Questions’. The exhibition will show the most recent work of graduate students from 2009 and is curated by Anne Mieke Eggenkamp, Chair Executive Board Design Academy Eindhoven and Ilse Crawford founding Head of Department for ‘Man and Well Being’. Crawford heads the renowned design company Studioilse, alongside her brand consultancy.
“What questions are we facing? What is the role of the designers today? What is the future role of a designer? What are we focusing on? Questions are the start of everything.” comments the academy on the show.
“Can Art be functional?”, asks Caroline Wilcke. She answered this question with her project ‘Tafelgenoten (Table Companions)’. Art can also be functional; it can make a person happy or it can serve as decoration in a room. On the other hand, utility can also serve as art. Carolina Wilcke has created a tableware range in which these two characteristics complement and find each other.
“Can design help us reconnect with our biorythms? With Morning Glory, Wendy Legro wants to bring back the sun, our natural source of light, into our lives. Because we use so much artificial light, we have lost touch with our biorythms. The Morning Glory light, consisting of mechanical flowers, works on a light sensor. By day, the flowers are closed, allowing the sun to shine in, and after sunset they open up and radiate light as they begin to cover the window.
Collection, Borre Akkersdijk; Minimal Dress, Digna Kosse
“Hasn’t everything already been done?” asked Borre Akkersdijk with his project ‘Collection’. He proves that this is not the case. He was inspired by the dressing up games his nephews played, and has converted child’s play into grown-up fashion. Using machines that normally make mattress covers, he created stuffed, billowing fashion fabrics and used them to create comfortable dresses, coats, trousers and tops. Sleeves, trouser legs and hoods come off the machine as ready-to-sew parts with pre-shaped sewing edges, so that they are easy to stitch together.
“How much can you leave out before a dress stops being a dress? asks Digna Kosse with her Minimal Dress project. “We should be able to reduce the amounts of material used in the fashion industry. Ever changing fashions have all but turned clothing into a disposable commodity. We cast aside perfectly good items of clothing, replacing them with new ones, at a feverish pace.” Digna Kosse has designed fifteen dresses that are anything but excessive in their use of material. She proves you can take this quite far: her Minimal Dresses are wispier than wispy, yet they remain very feminine dresses that will make a fashion statement.
Personal Fresh Air, Julio Radesca de Cavallo; From fable to table, Amélie Onzon
“Can we purify toxic air with plants?”, was the question Julio Radesca de Cavallo explored with his project ‘Personal Fresh Air’. How can you improve the air quality inside the home in a simple way? Offices especially suffer from poor air quality. Are we slowly poisoning ourselves? Julio Radesca de Carvalho discovered that twelve house plants per person would be enough to filter the air indoors. A dozen of three very ordinary species – the areca palm, the sansevieria and the epipremnun aureum – can keep us alive even in a completely closed space. Radesca gave twelve air filterers a place of their own inside a desk with a hydroponics system. A maintenance free, oxygen-making solution for a healthy workplace.
“Can cruelty be beautiful?”, wondered Amélie Onzon at the beginning of her graduation project ‘From fable to table’. Can design confront us with our double standards? Do you use these pieces to produce foie gras, or to give the ducks a better life? While conducting a research into the consumption of meat, Amélie Onzon became fascinated with the relationship between man and animal. ‘People will pamper their pets, yet at the same time they will eat the meat from other animals. This meat will have an abstract appearance, because we refuse to associate it with the living creature it once was.’ With From Fable to Table, Onzon wants to show us the inconsistencies in our relationships with animals.
Hair Brush, Lea Haefliger; Inflatable Void, Yoeri Treffers
“What kinds of feelings does hair provoke?” Lea Haefliger wanted to ask with her hair brush project. “Is it something mysterious, erotic, or rather, something like a fairytale?” Lea incorporates all these different aspects into a series of hairbrushes. During the design process she felt it was important to give the brushes a sustainable quality both in terms of material and emotion. Therefore, the hair on the brushes is not just a decorative element, but a functional one as well because it both is (a brush) and also protects the brush.
“How can we close ourselves off from the material world?” asked Yoeri Treffers and answered this question with his Inflatable Void. There are just a few places left where we can be free from the materialistic world full of images, sounds, objects, technology and social obligations. To allow a person to be completely alone for a while, Yoeri Treffers has come up with an inflatable cube made of polyethylene. There is a fan connected to the cube, inflating it within twenty seconds. The shape depends on the objects around the void, making it different every time.
‘Questions’ exhibition by Design Academy Eindhoven takes place April 14-18 at Ventura Lambrate (Undai Galleries), via Giovanni Ventura 6, 20134 Milan.
Image photo credits left to right, top to bottom: Lisa Klappe; Joost Govers; Lisa Klappe; Lisa Klappe; Lisa Klappe; René van der Hulst; Joost Govers; René van der Hulst.
