DDW13: Design Academy Eindhoven Graduate Show

The Design Academy Eindhoven graduate show was definitely one of the highlights of Dutch Design Week. Every year the Keep An Eye Foundation awards four students a grant of €11,000 to continue the work they’ve started at the academy. I spoke to five of the finalists about their work.

Luc van Hoeckel created a kit for the small scale production of ointment for his graduate project. He said: “I will send this box to an NGO in Uganda and they can make all the tools with local workshops to stimulate the local economy and then they can start small scale production.”

I also loved Daniel Costa and Dienke Dekker’s collaborative project combining stoneware and porcelain. Daniel said: “When we showed [our research] to professional ceramicists, they thought we were crazy, because porcelain and stoneware is never combined in industry because they behave so differently – it normally cracks.”

Video by Katie Treggiden and Daniel Nelson.

Our trip to Dutch Design Week was supported by Airbnb.com.

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.

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