“Dutch Design Awards celebrates Dutch design with all its distinctive elements as well as its common grounds. Being the most prestigious institute in the field of Dutch design, DDA annually presents an overview of the best of the year.”

– Dutch Design Awards

Organized and Curated by the Museum of Craft and Design
Guest Curator: Zahid Sardar
Exhibit Design: Ted Cohen
Registrar & Curatorial assistant: Ariel Zaccheo

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Hands Off was generously sponsored by KLM, the official airline of MCD.
Featured photo and photos below by Matthew Millman.

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Jurors: 

Matilda McQuaid – Deputy Curatorial Director and Head of Textiles Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

JoAnn Edwards – Executive Director San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design

Ravi Naidoo – Founder, Design Indaba

Rosa Bertoli – Design Editor, Wallpaper

Richard van der Laken – Co-founder What Design Can Do and Designpolitie

Saskia van Stein – Director Bureau Europa

Jan Konings – Curator and designer public space, Design Academy

Joost Alferink – Industrial designer and design consultant

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Guest Curator Zahid Sardar’s Note on Hands Off

Organized by the Museum of Craft and Design
Curated by Zahid Sardar

Modern technology affects how things are made but also what designers make and how those things look,

This exhibition, which was largely culled from Dutch Design Week in previous years, consists of objects made by new Dutch leaders of a global creative movement conmbining science and technology with traditional craft and design.  Hands Off is a reference to the way they work, creating objects and experiences that require little or no ‘making’ by hand.

At its core, Hands Off, which debuted in San Francisco, California in May 2015, involves architects, engineers and industrial designers from the Netherlands who embrace the digital impulse in manufacturing and celebrate the interdisciplinary multi-media plasticity that blossomed especially in Eindhoven and Amsterdam when the first Dutch design collectives such as Droog emerged during the 1990s.

Since that time Dutch Design has garnered a well-deserved reputation for a quirky wit made famous by Droog founders Gijs Bakker and Renny Ramakers, and designers such as Hella Jongerius, Jurgen Bey and Marcel Wanders.  The nearly 20 Dutch designers included in Hands Off, who largely emerged during the last five years at Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven, are also subverting new technologies to produce fresh, widely influential work that delights the mind, the eye and the spirit.

Presented under four suggestive banners – TechnoCraft, BioCraft, NaturoPaths and Hands off – all these designers (including four new works and one created in San Francisco by designers Scott Summit and Janne Kyttanen via a global online workshop) go beyond the beautiful quirky object and the better chair.  Relying on technology, biology and nature, they are invisibly shaping a new era of craft, and they suggest new paradigms for living.

Participants:

Anouk Wipprecht, Aoife Wullur, Atelier Ted Noten, ByBorre, Daniel de Bruin, Dennis Parren, Dirk Vander Kooij, DUS Architects, Erik Klarenbeek, Grietje Schepers, Jolan van der Wiel, Marcel Wanders, Martijn Koomen, Massoud Hassani, Random Studio / Petrovsky& Ramone, Raw Color, Scott Summit and Janne Kyttanen, Studio Drift, and Tiddo Bakker.

We wish to thank Lilian Tilmans en Hub Urlings (Ceryx)

Exhibition Team

Grietje Schepers – Spatial Design

Creatief buro Bolwerk – Construction

Thomas van Staveren – Graphic Design

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 Finalists Dutch Design Awards 2015 announced

The finalists for the 13th edition of the Dutch Design Awards are announced. Three committees consisting of independent experts came together led by chairmen Jan Konings (Habitat – Design Research), Richard van der Laken (Communication – Service&Systems) and Joost Alferink (Product – Fashion). They selected 28 finalists in the mentioned categories. The winners will be announced on Saturday, October 24th during Dutch Design Week.

SHORTLIST

The selection committees of Dutch Design Awards decided upon this shorlist after judging a total of 380 submissions. An international jury will appoint the winners in each of the 6 categories (Product Fashion, Communication, Service & Systems, Habitat and Design Research). All awards will be presented on Saturday, October 24th during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. The work of all finalists will then be on show in a nine-day exhibition. See the full overview of all finalists on

www.dutchdesignawards.nl.

DEVELOPMENTS

In the submissions this year there is a lot of attention for social issues. However, many of them lack a critical approach. The right institutes are missing to support designers in their knowledge development to implement this in society. This is where the challenge lies for designers: to take initiative and to create the right connections with the industry and businesses. Amongst the nominations especially realistic projects with a down-to-earth approach are appreciated. Striking is the attention that goes out to proper research and editing, with much attention for crafts, techniques and esthetics. The division between product design for industry and autonomous design appears to have widened. New manufacturing methods are increasingly competing with traditional ones. The committee agrees unanimously: the quality is high and the finalists are equals to international stars.

Dutch Design Awards are prizes for the best in the field of Dutch design. The prize-giving with exhibition during Dutch Design Week and the publication of the Dutch Design Yearbook (in cooperation with the publishers nai010) form a platform for the full spectrum of Dutch design.

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