Hasta La Ideas

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Now in its 16th edition, Dutch Design Week has established itself as perhaps the most trendsetting festival of its kind, thanks to a combination of government funding, marketing, and of course interesting projects and exhibitions. The family-friendly event can be both overwhelming and uneven in its effort to offer something for everyone, but it also rewards a bit of exploring beyond the overcrowded main venues. Besides Hardcore, highlights range from Fundamentals by Dutch Invertuals to the intimate Young Collectors exhibition.

Craft Council Nederland presents HOW&WOW

In the Strijp-S design district, Crafts Council Nederlands presented HOW&WOW at the Veemgebouw. Pictured here, works by Koos Breen and Jules Henderikus ten Velde

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

Craft Council Nederland presents HOW&WOW

While the designers and studios tend to be younger, ceramicist Babs Haenen will turn 70 next year.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

Craft Council Nederland presents HOW&WOW

On the whole, HOW&WOW skewed towards textiles and ceramics

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

Low and Bonar presents “In4Nite”

The Arnhem-based materials company Low & Bonar invited ten local designers to create projects with its “Colback” technical fabrics. The filament-based non-woven material is typically used in carpeting, flooring, automotive, and decorative applications.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

Low and Bonar presents “In4Nite”

Joris de Groot‘s “Pleated Seats” were the standout pieces, adapting the laminated pleated textiles used for air filters into a collection of furniture.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

“Tunnel Vision” by OS&OOS

At their studio in the up-and-coming Strijp-T district, OS&OOS presented their new “Tunnel” collection of pieces in aluminum and glass.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

“Tunnel Vision” by OS&OOS

The pieces in the “Tunnel” collection are based on a joint that does not require glue or fasteners.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

“Tunnel Vision” by OS&OOS

Originally inspired by the simple yet functional sawhorse, OS&OOS have evolved the series into other forms as well.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

The Young Collectors

Eindhoven’s industrial heritage means that many of DDW’s tentpole exhibitions take place in the former industrial settings. “The Young Collectors” showed design in the opposite context: a typical Dutch home.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

The Young Collectors

The owners of the townhouse commissioned Studio Thier & Van Daalen to redesign their kitchen. The designers, in turn, asked if they might open their doors to the public for design week, inviting nearly two dozen of their friends to furnish the space as a domestic showroom.

Photo credit: Imke Hoefker

View the full gallery here

While dream pop can get a bad rap for being a little too twee at times, this track by Tourist (feat. Swim Mountain + Esther Joy) is a gentle, twinkling example of the genre at its best. The song’s name, “Sleepwalking,” is a perfect explanation for……

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When you’re deciding where to start on a whole-home organizing project, it often makes sense to start with the attic, basement, or garage — whatever space you use as secondary storage for things you don’t use very often. There are two reasons for this:

• As you clear out the rest of your home, you’ll probably find things you want to move to one of these secondary storage places. Clearing it out first makes room for you to do those moves later.
• You’re probably less attached to many things in these secondary storage spaces, so it’s often quick and easy to make some real progress.

I’ve been doing my own garage uncluttering project for the past couple weeks. I knew it was time when bags and boxes were accumulating on the floor, making it harder to get into the storage closets. The following are some things I’ve done:

• Dropped off donations that were just sitting in the garage.
• Donated some items I had thought I might sell, after realizing I hadn’t done that for years and was unlikely to do it in the future.
• Recycled the box from my printer. It made sense to keep this for a while, in case I needed to return the printer, but that time has passed.
• Tossed an old pre-packaged emergency kit that had somehow gotten moldy.
• Put the lid to a kitty litter box in a dumpster someone let me use — it won’t fit in my garbage can — since I’ve now switched to using an unlidded box.
• Took a box of packing popcorn my local UPS Store. I rarely package something for mailing, and when I do I’d use something other than packing popcorn.
• Got rid of random items I’d saved because they might be useful sometime — but which I hadn’t used in years and couldn’t reasonably imagine needing in the near future. And they were all things I could easily get again, pretty inexpensively, if by any chance I did need them.
• Moved my cat carriers out of the garage and into my front hall closet, per the post-wildfire advice I read.

Now that I’ve done this uncluttering, it’s easy to put away the things I just bought that belong in the garage: spare light bulbs and batteries. I could also find spots for things I’d recently moved to the garage from the house but hadn’t put away for lack of free space.

I’m not done yet — I still need to go through all the old paint, for one thing. But my garage is working a lot better now.

Want to join me in clearing out a space? A friend named Dinah just wrote that instead of joining NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) she would celebrate DiProProMo (Dinah Project Progress Month). That sounds like a nice idea that other non-novel-writers may want to adopt.

Post written by Jeri Dansky

For the past 34 years, Wim Kruiswijk has been traversing the coasts of Zandvoort, Netherlands, in search of messages-in-bottles that have washed ashore. So far, he’s collected an unbelievable 1,200 letters, responding to as many as he can. Though it may take Kruiswijk anywhere from days to months to come across his next find, the thrill of the search and the surprise that each bottle holds keeps him going…(Read…)

Here’s a product that hits close to home for me. I come from Bangalore, India… also known as the “City of Lakes”. Even with its abundance of water, Bangalore experiences water shortages compared to no other city in India. The water we do get in our pipes is treated as a special resource, and citizens have independently begun rain-water harvesting because the government fails to successfully deal with the water crisis. It’s sad that the city of lakes is also the city of acute water shortage… going to show that we shouldn’t really be taking our natural resources for granted.

New Zealand based Methven decided that there had to be a way to save water without compromising on your bathroom experience. In a pursuit to get the best shower experience using the least amount of water, the Rua was developed. Just 20 minutes in a shower means you’re using 50 gallons of water, which I needn’t tell you is quite a lot. Most showers operate at an industry standard of 2.5 gallons per minute. Methven’s Rua functions at 1.8 gpm, which means you save 14 gallons each time you shower, and more than 14000 gallons a year per household (with 3 people)!

There’s a certain uniqueness and perfection to the Rua’s water dispersion and this comes from an incredible design and engineering effort, comparable to Dyson’s bladeless fan. Keeping in mind that the water needs to surround the user (bather?) in a manner that makes it seem like there are more jets than there actually are, and that the water should not mix with air to form bubbles or mist so that it retains its temperature, Rua’s design can be only described as bathing perfection. The water is expelled from rubber jets hidden inside the Rua’s sleek, chrome donut-esque frame. The jets shoot individual streams of water against a hydrophobic surface that cause the sharp jets to fan out into “water-fans”, that allow the water to cover a larger area while maintaining the same pressure. These fans of water feel good against the skin too, unlike the sharp jets that most shower heads produce. The Rua can be attached to your current bath setup as a shower-head, or can even be used as a hand shower. Its design while covering a large area, is largely hollow, making it rather lightweight.

Plus, the Rua comes with a lifetime warranty, so you can save water and the planet for many years to come!

Designer: Andy Grigor

Click here to Buy Now: $199.00 $259.00

Below: Protoype

Click here to Buy Now: $199.00 $259.00