On the up
Introducing a new generation of hotshots from Dutch ‘school of cool’, Design Academy Eindhoven
WORDS ANNEMARIE HOEVE
PHOTOGRAPHY FULCO SMIT ROETERS
Who: KYRA VAN INEVELD, THE NETHERLANDS (BA)
What: Tracking ‘the truth’ in Wikipedia
"My project is about the transitory nature of information. Fifty years ago, everyone had an encyclopedia at home. You didn’t think about what was ‘true’. With Wikipedia, the wisdom of the crowd ensures that ‘the truth’ changes every second. We’ve become continuous curators of our own reality. To illustrate this, I chose the five biggest topics on Wikipedia that have changed the most. I printed out all of the pages, including the edits, and bound them into five new encyclopedias.
The documents were so big, my computer crashed and my printer was on day and night for two full weeks.
The topics are: Barack Obama (2,706 pages), the Catholic Church (2,602 pages), the war in Gaza (2,289 pages), Global Warming (2,168 pages) and ‘Race and Intelligence’ (1,876 pages). The contributor lists alone contain thousands of names.
I sometimes wish that we could go back to the past, when you could depend on the word of a handful of ‘experts’."
Who: JOOST GEHEM, THE NETHERLANDS (BA)
What: New furniture from old interiors
"I use unwanted interiors as a raw material: the things that are left over after a divorce or when someone moves to a retirement home, or dies. Instead of condemning everything to the rubbish tip, I put it in a shredder, mix it with epoxy and, using an old East-German paper press I converted, I mould it into a different product – like these stools. It’s a way of giving them a new life. Sometimes people want to hold on to things that have a personal value to them, but they don’t have the space. In this way, they still have a keepsake. I like the idea of turning what might be a negative event into something positive."
Who: EUGENIA MORPURGO, ITALY (MA)
What: Fix-them-yourself shoes
"Unlike regular sneakers that are glued and stitched, these shoes have been designed to be disassembled. That means that when one of the parts wears out, you can repair it yourself. I chose traditional repair techniques like felting, patching and darning to reinforce the parts of the shoe that are easily damaged. Each design comes with its own special repair kit. You can choose the technique that appeals to you most. My aim isn’t only to make the shoes last longer, but also to get the tools for fixing things back in the house. Our grandmothers used to have all the right gear at home. If you had a hole in your sock, you’d repair it. Now you just throw it away, because often you don’t even have the right materials. Once you have the tools, you can also use them to fix other things."
See www.eumo.it
Who: JUAN MONTERO VALDES, UK (MA)
What: Hacking household appliances
"We have so many highly-engineered machines in our homes that we use in a monotonous way. You could get much more out of them by making them work together. To get people thinking about this, I made and printed my own money using only household appliances. I used a blender and pressure cooker to make paper from old jeans and sheets. Then I made red ink in a coffeemaker from food in my kitchen and hooked it up to my printer. But there are so many other things you could do, like use the rotary motion of your washing machine to make thread from lint collected in your dryer. You just need the right attitude."
Who: GERO ASMUTH, GERMANY (BA)
What: Water signs
"These signs are to help make people more aware of the work being done to control water levels in The Netherlands. I made a whole series of graphic icons. For example, one of them shows how flood plains keep cities dry, another shows a man lifting up a river, illustrating how rivers are re-routed. The one showing a man holding back a wave is actually going to be used at several locations in the Dommel area of The Netherlands. Much of the country is under sea level, but just by looking at the landscape, you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes to keep your feet dry."
Who: MASSOUD HASSANI, AFGHANISTAN AND THE NETHERLANDS (BA)
What: Child’s toy becomes anti-landmine sweeper
"I grew up in Afghanistan and, as a child, I used to make wind-powered toys. Sometimes they’d be blown into a minefield and I wouldn’t be able to get them. There were lots of landmines, and friends around me were getting hurt daily. This is like a new version of one of those early toys. Each ball is light enough to be blown by the wind and has 220 bamboo legs that can set off any hidden mines. It’s estimated that there are about 10 million anti-personnel mines in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But they’re a problem in many countries, like Angola, where there are believed to be 20 million landmines. With a population of 12 million, that’s almost two mines per person. People can’t use their own gardens – there’s so much land that’s being wasted. I’m currently testing the models in the field and refining my design. One of my new devices is cylindrical, so it can cover more ground."
