Future Footprints chosen as one of the hidden gems of DDW

During Dutch Design Week, e52 will be introducing you to the hidden gems of the festival. Together with Dutch Design Daily, we’ve selected nine special designers whose sparkle has caught our eye this year. Each day of DDW there’ll be a different hidden gem put under the spotlight. Today: Future Footprints by Material Sense.

Last year, Material Sense showed all the possibilities for used materials: many discarded items can go on to have a second life as a sustainable design product. In this way, old fishing nets were made into new rugs.

Material Sense is back at this year’s DDW. Future Footprints is still about sustainability and the circular economy, but this time the emphasis is on the emotional bond people have with products – either in their original state or in the form of their new jacket.

The exhibition will include the work of Lizanne Dirkx and Pietro Galgani from Upstyle Industries, which has emerged in the world of charity shops. The Dutch give away a huge amount of furniture every year – so much so that not even the second-hand stores can take it all in and the surplus has to be discarded. Dirkx and Galgani took in these wasted products and ensured that they were upgraded with a new design. This is exactly how the kistkruk came into being. Literally a “box-stool”, it’s a piece of furniture that you can both sit on and use to store your stuff. You can buy it as a flat-pack and put it together without screws, glue or other tools. The parts are made at a social workplace.

And now there’s research being carried out into this area on our own turf. Students of the Faculty of Industrial Design at TU/e are looking into how old stuff can inspire new products. The Unpreventable Ageing Project involves designers placing perishable items, such as fruit, into a material that is slow to decompose. With surprising results.

For those wondering: “what does a product mean to me?”, Hannah Kindler is here. Having recently graduated from the Rietveld Academie, she’ll be talking to visitors about the context of things and the affect that that has on the perception of worth.

Want to learn more about Future Footprints? There’s a special e52 + DDD meet and greet at the Kruisruimte from 15.00 on Friday 23 October. No need to sign up. Creative Director and Curator of the exhibition, Simone de Waart, will be there to talk about the work. See you then!