Anna van der Lei believes the bathroom as a fitted room is too restrictive. Having a bath is more than a physical cleanse; a good bath in the right place will be relaxing and refreshing. This Dutch version of a Finnish sauna can be placed outside as well as indoors. The larchwood cupboard has custom-made joints that will expand as they get wet, making it completely watertight. You can hang your clothes over the bath, where the steam will freshen them up while you sit and soak.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Do we really need all these professional sports outfits, gadgets, and stadiums to enjoy practising sports? We can do with a lot less, is Ingrid Brandth’s statement: our imagination is all we need. A car door slamming shut can be the starting signal for our race, clothes on a laundry line can be flags, and an obstacle in the road can be a hurdle. Brandth has designed a shoe to go with all this that will help trigger the imagination. The sole has been made out of the rubber used in athletics tracks, so that you will always have the track beneath your feet. Wear them, and your imagination will take care of the rest.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Could I do without? Floris Douma wondered and had his computer monitor him for a week. His Mac registered every web page he visited, every email he sent, every conversation he had online, and every film clip he saw. And the webcam took a picture of him every other minute during all this. He incorporated the data he gathered in a confronting installation that will hold a mirror up to computer users.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

From a very early age, Guy Königstein has been fascinated with his Jewish relatives and their movements across the globe. He has created two stop motion films about the subject, in which reels of coloured thread represent his characters. The reels are seen rolling through their lives, spinning around their childhood homes, crossing other people’s life threads, getting tangled up, running together for a while and then sometimes parting company again. The mutual relationships turn out to be of significant influence on the directions people take.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Is our use of resources still in proportion to our own measurements in relation to the world? Our consumerism has grown out of proportion, Digna Kosse believes. She has sought a way of visualising an exact human measure. Using water, she has determined the volume of her own body parts and taken this as a measure for a series of 25 bowls. The largest bowl shows the volume of her torso, the smallest one represents her little toe. If you were to fill each bowl with food, you would be eating an entire body.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

What are we to do with tears of intense grief? Kleenex tissues are well enough for watching a movie, but for personal sorrow, a disposable handkerchief is too short-lived, according to Roos Kuipers. She has designed a range of accessories to collect these tears and hold on to them. Her fragile glass rings are hollow on the inside; once the liquid has evaporated, a thin white film of salt remains. Her jewellery with soft bamboo pompoms and the glove with a doubly knitted fingertip are good for discreetly wiping away tears and keeping them with you forever.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Closing a coffin is a harsh, abrupt action that is ill-suited to the sensitive and emotional process of grieving. Roos Kuipers has designed a bier with softer, rounder shapes. When saying their last goodbyes, the bereaved can cover their lost one with six layers of transparent cloth, one at a time, slowly veiling the image of the deceased. Fastening each layer of cloth into a groove in the side, they can lovingly tuck in the deceased with the utmost care.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Why drink bottled water when the water from the tap is at least as good? Lizanne Dirkx wanted to stress the high quality of Dutch tap water and give it a special place. She has translated her fascination with fountains as a favoured meeting place into this Drinking Fountain. A sustainable and aesthetically justifiable alternative for the plastic water coolers you find in offices and public spaces. The earthenware will keep the tap water cool without using any electricity. The custom-made glasses and carafe with rubber valves will fill automatically when placed on the nipples.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

What happens if we make the micro world of the human body perceivable? Sonja Bäumel mixes biology with fashion. Her design is based on the fact that our skin hosts countless bacteria which connect our body to our surroundings. Bäumel wants to make use of the invisible individual skin bacteria by transforming these into a visible, functional and flexibly adapting membrane. She believes that this new clothing could change our interaction with the environment and may have healthy benefits for humans.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Breakthroughs in biological science have redefined the capabilities of the human body. A new frontier has opened for design, allowing the employment of the body’s material to cultivate products within. How might this new biological process alter our relationship with objects and the world around us? Mike Thompson suggests that by physically interacting with the object under the skin, we not only shape and increase its growth potential, but also come to terms with our own mortality – you design your own death.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

We live in a society where there is no time for death. Yet we are increasingly aware of the formative influence of grief. Can design aid in the process of bereavement? A design dealing with grief should be universal and subjective at the same time - similar to grief itself. Kwok Wing Lam blows bubbles to relieve the pain. The design comes to life by human breath, the act of blowing the bubbles is meditative and soothing. Wing Lam’s bubbles are playful and light, but also fragile and pure. They remind us of the innocence of our childhood, while gently symbolizing the transience and impermanence of life.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Is it something mysterious, erotic, or rather, something like a fairytale? Lea Haefliger wanted to incorporate 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 and protects the brush.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

A rain storm suddenly picking up will blow the print from off a dress; the colours in the design will become distorted and mixed. Mark van Gennip interrupted the technical process of digital fabric printing by adding water. The ink was literally soaked loose with water, resulting in designs that transformed from statically geometric to dramatically organic. By setting free such storms the designs will go their own way, each storm leaving behind a blur of spontaneous colour nuances and new shapes.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

This is what Sanne Van Wersch wondered. ‘Becoming or being a designer largely consists of knowing who you are and what story you want to tell. What sort of process do I go through when I am designing? What are my struggles, and where are my strong points?’ De Machinekamer is a visualisation of Van Wersch’s working method in which she compares her designing process with the production process in a factory.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

What is the future of a product after it has been used? Bas van der Veer wondered about this during his design process, and he concluded that the garden is a great place for allowing a product to return to nature. His Bioplastic Planter is a biodegradable container that makes it easier to plant and support a young tree, and then automatically degrades by itself under the influence of light, fungi and moisture.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Because we use so much artificial light, we have lost touch with our biorhythms. With Morning Glory, Wendy Legro wants to bring back the sun, our natural source of light, into our lives. This 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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Why is the hot water bottle increasingly replaced by an electric blanket? Wendy Legro wanted to reinstate the hot-water bottle, which offers us convenience and comfort if we are feeling poorly. In order to make it better suited to the natural curves of the human body, she adapted its texture, the lid, its ability to preserve heat, and its shape. The new material, felt, will spread the warmth gradually. To strengthen her hot-water bottle, she has lined the inside of the felt with polyurethane. Rubber makes it waterproof.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Kees Peerdeman and Tim Enthoven share a preference for drawing and short stories, and started up a visual conversation via Facebook while they were studying at Design Academy. Tim would create a drawing, Kees would respond to it, and a short story would develop. Peerdeman and Enthoven have set up their own publishing company, Drawing Publishers, which disseminates hand-drawn images through the internet.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

How can we set up a sustainable communications project in these cursory times? After conducting a research into the truths and untruths told after the 9-11 attacks, Laurens Manders wanted to create a tangible statement. His word image has four aspects: real, lies, true and fake. Seen from different perspectives you get a new ‘truthfulness assessment’ every time. It proves that the world and world events are not always what they seem at first sight.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Can a sixteenth-century curiosity cabinet be transposed to our times?

Jon Stam has created a cabinet that incorporates the tensions between the physical and the virtual world. There is room for physical objects, and digital data can be stored on memory sticks and RFID tags. In order to stress the weightlessness and the immaterial character of the virtual space, he has left his digital boxes hollow and embedded the sticks and tags in the wood.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Inspired by the folk event of the “cene di San Giuseppe” in Sicily, “Autarky” is an installation that proposes an autonomous way of producing goods and outlines a hypothetical scenario where a community is embracing a serene and self inflicted embargo where nature is personally cultivated, harvested and processed, to feed and make tools to serve human necessities.“Autarky” pays homage to the uncomplicated, the simple and the everyday.In the installation, a collection of functional and durable vessels and lamps, naturally desiccated or low temperature baked, are produced with a bio-material composed of 70% flour, 20% agricultural waste, and 10% natural limestone. The differences in the colour palette are obtained by the selection of distinct vegetables, spices and roots that are dried, boiled or filtered for their natural dyes.  Studio Formafantasma also invited the Italian broom maker Giuseppe Brunello and the renowned French bakery Poilane, to join in the development of the installation. The cereal Sorgho works as a link between these crafts – in a perfect production process without waste, the cereal is harvested and used to create tools, vessels and foods. “Autarky” suggests an alternative way of producing goods where inherited knowledge is used to find sustainable and uncomplicated solutions.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Are they simply poetic tools, used for illustration? Fumiaki Goto discovered that these figures of speech will often stem from previous generations and sometimes contain sensitivities. With the help of design, metaphors or sayings can be visualised and rid of their sensitivities and sharp edges. Goto translated three Japanses metaphors into three products: one clock and two lamps.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Brigitt Albers wanted to find out. So for five months she observed the Dutch on their Sunday afternoons between 2.00 am and 3.00 am, and made a film about it. Zondagmiddag shows the range of leisure time activities, with culture and passion playing an important role. The Dutch landscape shows us the environment where the choreography of movement takes place. Albers: ‘Observing people’s leisure time is a voyage of discovery into something very near to me, but at the same time just as unknown as a faraway destination.’

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Steie van Vugt made a mirror installation that played with the dimensions of a space: the mirrors pull the space apart like a kaleidoscope and display conflicting images. The installation emphasizes and blurs angles and holes, creating both calmness and complexity. Dimensies gives an empty concrete space a unique finishing touch and lets people reflect on how they experience a space.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Can a tree’s original, organic structure be combined with the industrial, geometric shapes used in the wood processing industry? Lex Pott has joined these two worlds in his range of furniture. Where the legs of his table meet the table top, the shape of the tree trunk is distinctly visible. The pieces of furniture are reproducible, yet remain unique fragments of nature.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Art is something functional, too; it will make a person happy or it will serve as decoration in a room. On the other hand, utensils can also be used as art. Carolina Wilcke has created a tableware range in which these two characteristics complement and find each other. This creates a tension between the decorative and the utility functions, with the objects taking on meaning through their context or the situation in which they have been placed.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Gionata Gatto is introducing Cultural roots, based on the concept that food not only distinguishes us, but unites us as well. The luggage in these transparent, moveable flight-cases is a seed-bed for herbs and vegetables from all corners of the world. Place the cases in unused public spaces in the city, and they will grown into multicultural vegetable patches where anyone can grow anything they like. It will turn abandoned public spaces into communal spaces bearing the seeds from which new communities can grow.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

New technologies offer quick and easy solutions, but they also mean losing a great deal of traditional knowledge,  which is seen as old fashioned. However new technologies are only simple in terms of the final output and always have more complicated processes behind them. Jihyun Ryou has researched this subject, focusing specifically on food preservation, which people today have handed over to their refrigerators.  We no longer understand how to treat it.  Her  design is a tool to implement oral knowledge – which has been accumulated by experience and transmitted verbally from one person to another – in a tangible way. By paying attention to food and changing our ideas of food preservation we can restore the connection between different types of living beings, ourselves and our food. We can also address current issues such as energy overconsumption and food wastage. And by getting people thinking and creating new traditions and new rituals, this tool can contribute to changing the bigger picture and slowly help bring about change in society.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

How to create a new in-flight dining experience which benefits the airline, the passenger and the environment? Sabine Marcelis and Paula Colchero won the first prize in the international Air France design contest for an innovative solution for their meal service. Inspired by the French picnic tradition, this PICNIC needs no tray or any disposable wrappings. After unwrapping the tablecloth you can arrange the ultra light plates, bowls and cups any way you desire. Form and material are space-saving and nature friendly.

About Air France

Air France, as a major airline, has always worked with prestigious and famous designers to infuse innovation and modernity in the products and services proposed to the passengers.

True to its innovative approach, Air France has held a competition for European design students, asking them to come up with new in–flight-meal-tray and tableware concepts. The twofold objective of this contest was to give young European designers the opportunity to show off their talent and to discover new innovative concepts which could be suitable for Air France, especially for long haul flight.

The entries were judged on creativity and originality, aesthetic appeal, integration of environmental constraints, technical feasibility and economic viability.

The jury was presided by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance and first prize winner were Paula Colchero and Sabine Marcelis, Design Academy Eindhoven.

If all of the projects presented were interesting, the winner one, inspired by French-style Picnics, caught the attention of the jury with the relevance of a new approach to meals on board. This refreshing and surprising project breaks with the codes of traditional meal trays and calls to reinvest the meal as a time of sharing and celebration in connection with the travel experience. Moreover, while addressing the environmental dimensions and weight gain with relevance, Picnics aptly reflects the image of Air France.

Air France has always considered design as as a mark of attention and recognition given to its clients, in close connection with its unique vision of air travel.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Death Watch (Monocle News Report on Remember Me with DELA)

view movie:
http://www.monocle.com/sections/design/Web-Articles/Deathwatch1

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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Anna van der Lei believes the bathroom as a fitted room is too restrictive. Having a bath is more than a physical cleanse; a good bath in the right place will be relaxing and refreshing. This Dutch version of a Finnish sauna can be placed outside as well as indoors. The larchwood cupboard has custom-made joints that will expand as they get wet, making it completely watertight. You can hang your clothes over the bath, where the steam will freshen them up while you sit and soak.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Inspired by the folk event of the “cene di San Giuseppe” in Sicily, “Autarky” is an installation that proposes an autonomous way of producing goods and outlines a hypothetical scenario where a community is embracing a serene and self inflicted embargo where nature is personally cultivated, harvested and processed, to feed and make tools to serve human necessities.“Autarky” pays homage to the uncomplicated, the simple and the everyday.In the installation, a collection of functional and durable vessels and lamps, naturally desiccated or low temperature baked, are produced with a bio-material composed of 70% flour, 20% agricultural waste, and 10% natural limestone. The differences in the colour palette are obtained by the selection of distinct vegetables, spices and roots that are dried, boiled or filtered for their natural dyes.  Studio Formafantasma also invited the Italian broom maker Giuseppe Brunello and the renowned French bakery Poilane, to join in the development of the installation. The cereal Sorgho works as a link between these crafts – in a perfect production process without waste, the cereal is harvested and used to create tools, vessels and foods. “Autarky” suggests an alternative way of producing goods where inherited knowledge is used to find sustainable and uncomplicated solutions.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Is our use of resources still in proportion to our own measurements in relation to the world? Our consumerism has grown out of proportion, Digna Kosse believes. She has sought a way of visualising an exact human measure. Using water, she has determined the volume of her own body parts and taken this as a measure for a series of 25 bowls. The largest bowl shows the volume of her torso, the smallest one represents her little toe. If you were to fill each bowl with food, you would be eating an entire body.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Gionata Gatto is introducing Cultural roots, based on the concept that food not only distinguishes us, but unites us as well. The luggage in these transparent, moveable flight-cases is a seed-bed for herbs and vegetables from all corners of the world. Place the cases in unused public spaces in the city, and they will grown into multicultural vegetable patches where anyone can grow anything they like. It will turn abandoned public spaces into communal spaces bearing the seeds from which new communities can grow.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Can a sixteenth-century curiosity cabinet be transposed to our times?

Jon Stam has created a cabinet that incorporates the tensions between the physical and the virtual world. There is room for physical objects, and digital data can be stored on memory sticks and RFID tags. In order to stress the weightlessness and the immaterial character of the virtual space, he has left his digital boxes hollow and embedded the sticks and tags in the wood.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Is it something mysterious, erotic, or rather, something like a fairytale? Lea Haefliger wanted to incorporate 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 and protects the brush.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

A rain storm suddenly picking up will blow the print from off a dress; the colours in the design will become distorted and mixed. Mark van Gennip interrupted the technical process of digital fabric printing by adding water. The ink was literally soaked loose with water, resulting in designs that transformed from statically geometric to dramatically organic. By setting free such storms the designs will go their own way, each storm leaving behind a blur of spontaneous colour nuances and new shapes.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

What are we to do with tears of intense grief? Kleenex tissues are well enough for watching a movie, but for personal sorrow, a disposable handkerchief is too short-lived, according to Roos Kuipers. She has designed a range of accessories to collect these tears and hold on to them. Her fragile glass rings are hollow on the inside; once the liquid has evaporated, a thin white film of salt remains. Her jewellery with soft bamboo pompoms and the glove with a doubly knitted fingertip are good for discreetly wiping away tears and keeping them with you forever.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Closing a coffin is a harsh, abrupt action that is ill-suited to the sensitive and emotional process of grieving. Roos Kuipers has designed a bier with softer, rounder shapes. When saying their last goodbyes, the bereaved can cover their lost one with six layers of transparent cloth, one at a time, slowly veiling the image of the deceased. Fastening each layer of cloth into a groove in the side, they can lovingly tuck in the deceased with the utmost care.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

New technologies offer quick and easy solutions, but they also mean losing a great deal of traditional knowledge,  which is seen as old fashioned. However new technologies are only simple in terms of the final output and always have more complicated processes behind them. Jihyun Ryou has researched this subject, focusing specifically on food preservation, which people today have handed over to their refrigerators.  We no longer understand how to treat it.  Her  design is a tool to implement oral knowledge – which has been accumulated by experience and transmitted verbally from one person to another – in a tangible way. By paying attention to food and changing our ideas of food preservation we can restore the connection between different types of living beings, ourselves and our food. We can also address current issues such as energy overconsumption and food wastage. And by getting people thinking and creating new traditions and new rituals, this tool can contribute to changing the bigger picture and slowly help bring about change in society.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Because we use so much artificial light, we have lost touch with our biorhythms. With Morning Glory, Wendy Legro wants to bring back the sun, our natural source of light, into our lives. This 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.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl

Why is the hot water bottle increasingly replaced by an electric blanket? Wendy Legro wanted to reinstate the hot-water bottle, which offers us convenience and comfort if we are feeling poorly. In order to make it better suited to the natural curves of the human body, she adapted its texture, the lid, its ability to preserve heat, and its shape. The new material, felt, will spread the warmth gradually. To strengthen her hot-water bottle, she has lined the inside of the felt with polyurethane. Rubber makes it waterproof.

Press info: http://press.designacademy.nl