Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Show 2022. Who can afford to be critical? by Alfonso Pereira de Matos – Photo by ©about.today.
Design – During Dutch Design Week, the Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Show 2022 featured 211 Master’s and Bachelor’s graduation projects responding to a world threatened by environmental crises, accelerated by digitisation, and rewritten through new understandings of history. Check the ones we liked the most.
- RELATED STORIES: Read more about Dutch Design Week on Archipanic.
Solar Metal Smelter by Jelle Seegers
Photo by ©Iris Rijskamp.
“Many fabrication processes are extremely energy consuming. Moreover, the equipment does not spark a creative impulse.” Says Jelle Seegers, who has devised a smelting machine to melt metal more sustainably. The design features a giant magnifying glass that can be moved to follow the track of the sun in order to direct its heat into a crucible holding metal until it can be cast into a sand mold. The casts become sturdy bases for human and other natural powered tools.
The Bittersweet of Plantation by Yassine Ben Abdallah
Photo by ©Femke Reijerman.
The plantation museum of La Reunion narrates the French colony’s heritage through sugarcane monoculture, but only the white master’s artifacts are displayed. “How can stories of the labourers be narrated without objects testifying to their existence?” Asks Yassine Ben Abdallah. The designer creates a confrontational encounter where dripping sugar machetes oppose the master’s artifacts, raising an important question: whose heritage and history are allowed to be preserved, narrated, and immortalized?
Meanders by Juliette Vandermosten
Photo by ©Nicole Marnati.
Juliette Vandermosten created Meanders, a table game, and tool to build open conversational spaces in families dealing with dementia. “By aiding participants in listening to each other, the collaborative board game allows them to communicate differently and from a place of vulnerability.” Meanders strikes a balance between fun and complex emotions, encouraging participants to reconnect and rethink their relationships through mutual care.
For Greener Pastures by Gereon Wahle
Photo by ©Nicole Marnati.
Every year, 2.49 million tons of leather waste are landfilled or burned. Gereon Wahle combined biological hide glue and shredded leather waste to create a composite, plastic-like material that can be broken down and pressed into something new. The designer also developed a unique material process and recycling infrastructure, allowing companies to participate in the circular leather economy.
Endless Etching by Jibbe van Schie
Photo by ©Nicole Marnati.
Endless Etching is a contemporary homage to the age-old craft of intaglio printmaking. Jibbe van Schie developed an automated etching machine and ‘trained’ a self-learning algorithm with thousands of etches from digital archives, enabling it to create autonomous works of art. Instead of engraving a flat copper plate and filling the grooves with ink to make a print, the smart apparatus adds yet another dimension to the craft. It scratches its continuous output onto a rotating acrylic tube, and the ink is replaced by light.
Re-Sounding Yarns by Paula Vogels
Photo by Ronald Smits.
Paula Vogels explored the disparate sounds of textile production in different social-economic contexts, including supply chains exploiting labour conditions. The result is a spatial installation featuring woven fabric speakers that reproduce the broad sonic spectrum of weaving, from the rhythmic patterns activated by hand-weavers guided to the deafening thunder of power looms that compromise workers’ health in mega industrial factories.
Drawn object by Join Yoon
Photo by ©Femke Reijerman.
Jiin Yoon adds an expressive dimension to traditional metal sculpting by handling a plasma cutter as a pencil. Instead of creating the illusion of a 3D object on paper, she actually shaped the metal with drawing techniques such as hatching and cross-hatching. The plasma cutter is designed to cut through electrically conductive materials with a jet of hot plasma. Jiin explored multiple other capabilities of the machine in order to shape and colour the steel.
Spiritual Accelerationism by Teresa Fernández-Pello
Photo by maxkneefel.
With Spiritual Accelerationism, Teresa Fernández-Pello explores new narratives of technology and spirituality. The designer created a neo-altar made of mobile phones, speakers, and tablets that were deconstructed and re-arranged in geometric patterns, rhythmic light, and vibration flows. The work is a re-narration of the contemporary technological order as a transitory trance experience, as well as an invitation to consider religion, myths, and other spiritual tools as technologies of another era.
Factory of Inefficiency by Juno Brown
Photo by ©Ronald Smits.
“There is value in inefficiency,” believes Juno Brown, who built a tiny and fully functioning match factory in which he acts as the only employee. His Factory of Inefficiency playfully defies the current industrial focus on growth and efficacy. Instead, it considers new values such as the pleasure of work, the appreciation of imperfection, or the excitement of stumbling across the unexpected.
Who can afford to be critical? by Alfonso Pereira de Matos
Photo by ©about.today.
Afonso Pereira de Matos’ project Who can afford to be critical? is a multi-format campaign highlighting the contradictions about the role of a critical attitude in design once the graduates come to terms with the real world and need to build their own professional careers. “Institutions like Design Academy choose to address social, political, and environmental conditions. Yet, who can afford to continue such a practice?” One poster reads ‘I tried to subvert capitalism with practice. Now I am looking for a job.’ The campaign features t-shirts, posters, flyers, fanzines, a website, and a series of meetings.
Design Academy Eindhoven Grad Show 2022 – Photo by maxkneefel.
Photos of Design Academy Eindhoven graduation show 2022: courtesy of DAE.
- RELATED STORIES: Read more about Design Academy Eindhoven on Archipanic.
Photo by maxkneefel.
