On to DDW21

Deep Design. Uh? Never heard of it. Could well be. It is a new discipline. According to ‘deep designer’ Anne van Strien, this means “working from the premise that form follows consciousness instead of function". Forms follows consciousness – an interesting thought. To illustrate: in order to change our view on water issues, for example, we must first learn to listen. Van Strien therefore created the podcast series Listening to the voice of water. Hence Deep Design can be heard in the Embassy of Water.

Data dominate our lives. So yes, data are, of course, inevitable at Dutch Design Week (DDW). Or to be more precise, the information we divulge with these data. Even though it is at times very convenient; for instance, when Google immediately understands what you're looking for on the DDW website. However, our lives are increasingly influenced by data in an invisible manner. And this influence is far more subtle and extends much further than pumping out fake news and conspiracy theories.

We live in a period of massive uncertainty, which in turn stirs feelings of upheaval and listlessness. Or even depression. The climate and Covid-19. Trump in power and the housing market collapsing. One demographic suffering immensely is the millenials. That seems to be something of a consensus among the final project exhibit at Design Academy Eindhoven, which contains various projects with an almost therapeutic impact.

It is no longer possible to imagine contemporary design without material experiments. As in previous years, Dutch Design Week (DDW) offers an array of sustainable, innovative, surprising but also quirky and at times downright nonsensical projects with which designers experiment with materials.

As early as 1926, Mart Stam showed it with his legless chair made from bent steel for the manufacturer Thonet. It was a pilot model for what the modern industry had in store. A hyper-functional chair with a futuristic looped shape. Just like Ray & Charles Eames with their throne for the 1950s' middle class – an oversized lounge chair that perfectly embodied leisure time, itself a novel concept. A more recent example is Dirk van der Kooij, who introduced a new kind of eco-tech with his chairs made of waste plastic and a robot arm converted into a 3D printer.

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unavoidable theme for designers. Man and earth are, after all, inextricably linked. On an ever increasing scale, the destructive attitude of man contrasts with caring nature.