While we were in the Netherlands for Dutch Design Week, I began to focus on just what the catalysts are that make an area fertile ground for designers.  Eindhoven is not a big city, it is industrial in nature and in the interior of the country, not close to any significant centers for culture.  But its impact on design worldwide is completely out of scale with its size and importance.

Home to the Design Academy at Eindoven and several other design schools, it has an ability to keep its graduates in the area for a couple of years using inexpensive studio space as a hook, then when they have been out of school for 4 or 5 years, and have more of a design following, there is available workshop space for the larger space needs of a small design business, at reasonable rents.

The work shown here is just the start of many posts on the subject, but what is interesting is that this artist is a 2014 graduate of the Design Academy in Eindhoven and is exploring faceted forms for furniture.  So this maquette is interesting, but can you scale it?  Does it fit and function well?  Where is the designer working? And what is he doing next?

All of these questions were answered in the next two photos

So it looks like the student work of last year has been replaced by an organic form concept linked to the faceted form concepts he had already developed.  Pretty impressive for a person not even 2 years out of school.  But is till leaves the question of whether he can execute any of these in full size pieces.

 

and the answer is – yes, he is capable as a maker as well as designer.  This stands almost 7 feet tall, and while it is still early work, and the execution of it is not flawless, the fact that a person only a couple of years out of school is willing and able to take on this sort of challenge is impressive.

 

 

What allows this to happen in the small town of Eindhoven?  We’ll get to that later.  In the meantime I have to get to the shop and do some serious design work…

R.