“They are passionate, committed and full of new ideas,” Annemoon Geurts of De Kazerne explains. She’s talking about the generation of designers who have started during the last crisis years. This generation is documented for the first time, in an exhibition curated by Jeroen Junte. “They think in terms of opportunities and solutions. They’re Up Next”, Junte says.
Until September the exhibition ‘Next Up’ is to be enjoyed at De Kazerne, but especially for the DTW Junte shows the connection between technology and design. Tonight, during Next up live in De Kazerne, the design critic will highlight various themes of the exhibition dealing with technology. Designers Jesse Kirschner, Jesse Howard and Rose Merman talk about their own work.
“Design is no longer the beautiful shape of a chair. It also involves the choice of material. One trend is to recycle materials, but not like it is done for years, with a cabinet of old, re-used wood for example. But by using pure waste as the basic material for manufacturing. Thanks to the new technological possibilities, there are great new opportunities”, Geurts says. As an example, she mentions Dirk van der Kooij. He rebuilt a discarded robot arm from China to a 3D printer and right now he is printing new furniture out of old CD cases, refrigerators, keyboards and computers. “He also programmed the software for the 3D printer itself.”
Jeroen Hol is one of the designers who have been approached by Julte to participate in the exhibition. What he designed as an assignment at the TU/e (industrial design), along with Bram Naus and Pepijn Verburg, is a music player with no real control, as a counterpart to all the things that are customisable nowadays. “It used to be that, when you walked into someone’s room, you could tell someone’s music taste by the albums in his collection. Now everyone listens to music through spotify, and you know, you don’t nail spotify on the wall. Olly is associated with your spotify account and when the disc in the center begins to turn, you can give it a swing. Because of this begins a certian song from your spotify history begins to play.”
According Hol, the Next Up designers want to do things differently. In the exhibition booklet Julte puts it as follows: “The digital natives that shape our future do not fear the complex technology but try to turn it to their advantage. As little children they already swiped through their picture books in the hope that this would change the pages of tomorrow’s world. So they know that an app or virtual product can have a greater impact than a tangible object.”
But it is even possible to combine these two worlds; an app and a tangible object. “Like with Jesse Kirschner, you just have to let him go. He always returnsk with great ideas”, Geurts says enthusiastically. Jesse Kirschner has designed classic-looking measurement tools that directly convert the measurement results into a 3D drawing. “A perfect example of using technology in design.”
Next up Live is free, registering is here.
