Amsterdam | ‘Dream Out Loud’ radical design ideas at the Stedelijk Museum

“Dream Out Loud. Designing for Tomorrow’s Demands” – Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Every two years, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam stages a major survey aimed to spotlight the latest innovations within a particular art discipline.
In the last edition – whose results can be seen in the exhibition Dream Out Loud. Designing for Tomorrow’s Demands – the Dutch museum focused on contemporary design and issued an open call for submissions, inviting artists and designers living and working in the Netherlands to submit proposals.
Some 400 designers responded, submitting a total of 750 projects. A jury selected 26 participants, whose work is featured in the exhibition.

We Make Carpets, Stirrer Carpet and Umbrella Carpet, detail. Photo: Room on the Roof.
These unconventional carpets are made from mass-production goods. Products- often low-cost and banal – of the economic globalization.

What does emerge from the works of the selected designers?
Overall, their designs delineate two common research subjects; namely, the desire to go further the design of “nice-looking” products sharing the global market with millions of other items produced daily, and the exigency to investigate, through design, the society we live in, and our shared behaviors.

Yet, approaches to such themes are quite different from one another.
Some designers focus on everyday objects with irony and a poetic vision, like a mission committed to counteracting the contemporary market’s cynicism and triviality by providing cleverness to things.
Others investigate subjects usually not associated with a stereotypical idea of design, such as our relationship with food, by creating a “knitted food” alternative to meat.
Others create projects aimed to invite people to interact with one another, in opposition to so many contemporary trends that induce isolation and unbridled individualism.
Other designers take recycling so much to heart that they amass hordes of objects, re-envisioning them as hip fashion, crafting pieces of jewelry from old safety helmets, or melting down discarded CDs to print a chair.

Next Nature Network, Knitted Meat

Agatha Haines. Agi Haines’ work is focused on the design of the human body. How might people respond to the possibilities of our body as another everyday material and how far can we push our malleable bodies while still being accepted by society?

Floor Nijdeken, Crossover Collective. Photo: Louise te Poele
Floor Nijdeken focuses on projects aimed at creating socialization and dissemination of knowledge, as an antidote to a contemporary society that fosters people’s isolation

Overall, almost effortlessly, a new language of form is beginning to emerge. It’s possible, it’s happening, and it’s breeding a new generation of Dutch designers who are passionate about improving upon what already exists, rather than adding to the abundance of luxury items.
Although this ‘social design’ may not always generate instantly usable applications, nevertheless it lets us believe that design can really make a difference, after all.

Participants in Dream Out Loud:
Agatha Haines
Bart Hess
Benedikt Fischer
Boyan Slat
Claire Verkoyen
Dirk van der Kooij
Elisa van Joolen
Fairphone (Bas van Abel)
Floor Nijdeken
Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin)
Helmut Smits
Hella Jongerius / KLM
Jesse Howard
Marjan van Aubel
Marleen Kaptein / NLR / LABEL/BREED
Metahaven (Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden)
Next Nature Network (Koert van Mensvoort and Hendrik-Jan Grievink)
Olivier van Herpt
Patrick Kruithof
Pavèl van Houten
Pieke Bergmans
Pieter Stoutjesdijk
Studio Drift (Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta)
Studio Roosegaarde (Daan Roosegaarde)
Studio Stallinga (Henk Stallinga)
We Make Carpets (Marcia Nolte, Stijn van der Vleuten and Bob Waardenburg)

Formafantasma, Botanica. Project: Studio Formafantasma, Andrea Trimarchi, Simone Farresin. Commission by: Plart Foundation. Photo: Luisa Zanzani.
Studio Formafantasma investigated the pre-Bakelite period, discovering unexpected textures, sensations, and technical possibilities offered by natural polymers extracted from plants or animal derivatives. The designers researched and hunted for information, digging into the 18th and 19th centuries, when scientists began experimenting with draining plants and animals in search of plasticity. Rosin, Damar, Copal (a sub-fossil state of amber), Natural Rubber, Shellac (a polymer extracted from insect excrement that colonizes trees,) and Bois Durci (a 19th-century material composed of wood dust and animal blood), are among the materials investigated by the studio.

Elisa van Joolen, Sweatshirt-Pants, One-to-One, 2016. Photo: Uta Eisenreich.
Elisa van Joolen works on the transformation of used clothes into print patterns for new textiles; the objective of her research is to investigate the social significance of brands and the actual value of materials

Pieke Bergmans, Phenomeneon Cloud, 2016. Photo Mirjam Bleeker 

Marjan van Aubel, Current Table. Photo: Mathijs Labadie

The jury comprised: 
Bas van Beek (designer and lecturer)
Corinna Gardner (curator of contemporary product design, Victoria & Albert Museum, London)
Caroline Prisse (artist, curator and director of Van Tetterode Glass Studio)
Chris Reinewald (design journalist and former editor-in-chief of Items and Museumvisie)
Lennart Booij (curator of applied arts, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, jury chairman and curator of the exhibition).

Proposals for Municipal Art Acquisitions is organized bi-annually with the financial support of the Municipality of Amsterdam.

Helmut Smits, The Real Thing 2014, A distilling installation that turns Coca-Cola back into clean drinking water. Made possible by Synthetic Organic Chemistry Group, University of Amsterdam and TU/e, Photo by Ronald Smits

Pieter Stoutjesdijk (TheNewMakers), Post-disaster shelter for Haiti, 2013/2016. Photo: Pieter Stoutjesdijk 

Studio Dirk Vander Kooij, NotOnlyHollowCHAIR, 2014, Courtesy of gallery chamber. Photo: Loek Blonk. An in-house developed robot melts the plastic into pipes with which it then carefully shapes this chair, through a process similar to 3D printing.

All images courtesy of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam