"Design is changing as you are learning it. Design is changing because you are learning it. Design is changing because of you." With these words Thomas Widdershoven, artistic director of Design Academy Eindhoven, officially opened the academic year. All (new) students, teachers and employees celebrated the start of the new academic year on tuesday 2 September. This year will be the beginning of new things, for example the department Food Non Food, led by eating designer Marije Vogelzang. It will also mean continuation of great events: the Graduation Show 2014 will open in a little more than 6 weeks from now. We wish all students and recent graduates good luck!
The full text of the speech by Thomas Widdershoven:
Design Academy Eindhoven – everything we are striving for in this unique institution is right there in the name. Design. What is it? Can we define it? It seems a bit of an enigma.
Design at its most pragmatic is supposed to be an act of problem solving, but a lot of design causes more problems than it solves.
The “What Design Can Do” conference in Amsterdam put it best: “The Designer is a Game Changer”. This is a less pragmatic and more strategic view on design. But added to this we can see design as an experiment. Design as an innovation. There is design fiction and of course social design. The list goes on because design as a profession is still relatively young and is in a state of flux … which is all great because what we do still has the ability to surprise, and the capacity to change.
Here at Design Academy Eindhoven there is a celebrated history of investigations into better understanding what design can be.
Design is changing as you are learning it. Design is changing because you are learning it. Design is changing because of you.
So we cannot define design, but we can redefine it, and to stay at the forefront of this we need research. That is where our exhibitions in the Van Abbemuseum, here in Eindhoven, fit in. Last year the exhibition was called “Self Unself”. It questioned the position of the designer in self-initiated projects. Dave Hakkens’ modular phone was an icon of the show because it coupled a very unselfish approach to open-source design with a highly personal story of Dave seeking support to fight conservatism and protectionism in the smart phone business.
This year the show will be called “Sense Nonsense” which looks at the sense within nonsense. The exhibition’s iconic project is Teresa van Dongen’s bacteria fueled lamp. For this Teresa coupled the very sensible and scientific attitude of biological research with a more magical and intuitive approach of design. It captures how design thinking is never completely rational or logical. As designers we must always cherish the nonsense – that moment when creativity turns logic into metaphor. It is the only way to maintain a free and creative way of thinking.
To stay on the cutting edge of redefining design we have introduced some changes to the curriculum. Last year we merged two departments to create the “Public – Private”. Where the distinction lies between these poles has really become unchartered territory. The private home and the public square melt into one through technological and economic forces. To fuse the departments, therefore, was the logical next step.
This year we also welcome a brand new department: “Food – Nonfood”, which is about meeting an essential human need. Design can change how people eat on both an individual and global scale. Food is about cooking, eating and nutrition, but it is also governed by systems that control industry and ultimately people.
And in the Masters’ programme we have introduced a design writing and curating branch, which is connected to the existing courses in contextual, social- and information design. Here students can develop a reflective and representational approach to understanding design.
So design means for us: redefining design. But what does it mean to be an academy? Originally an academy was a school in ancient Greece, founded two and a half thousand years ago by Plato. Plato’s way of teaching was based on dialogue because through dialogue ideas can be tested and perfected. We believe that the academy model still holds so we try to expose you - who we have chosen for your talent, motivation and personality – to your tutors who come to the academy from their own active design practices. In that way it becomes a real community and a meeting of creative minds. Current designers clashing and creating with the next generation.
We also rely on an exciting network of professional associations called “The Friends Programme.” By doing projects together we open up our academy to the world outside. We do for instance a project with the prison in Veenhuizen, which involves helping a difficult group of inmates in a series of design workshops where they learn to work together – to devise a plan, to develop their creativity and to gain a sense of pride in what they have accomplished.
As an academy our focus is on building and benefiting from a learning community that looks outwards to real-life collaborations.
And finally I want to talk about the last cog in our title - Eindhoven. 95% of our Masters’ students and 60% of our Bachelor students come from abroad. We represent and reflect the multipolarity of a changing world order and Eindhoven is a major player in this global transition. This provincial post-industrial town was bombed by the British in World War Two, built by Phillips and then a decade ago was almost completely abandoned. The city is now being reinvented by high-tech industry and design. It makes it a fascinating place with an easy relationship with experimentation and creativity. Eindhoven has nothing to lose – it is a city in the making and the Design Academy Eindhoven plays an important role in that evolution.
So to you, the students of the Design Academy Eindhoven I encourage you to stay true and close to yourself and where you come from, but also look outwards – first to Eindhoven and then beyond. Feed off it. Respond to it.
I wish you the very best of luck and herewith I open the academic year.