A warm welcome for Joseph Grima, the new creative director by Jurriënne Ossewold during the opening of the academic year. Followed by the announcement of the award winners by Martijn Paulen. Three prizes were given to last years graduates:
Rene Smeets award
2017 Rene Smeets award for the most professional attitude is Simon Dogger. He impressed the jury by transforming a loss into a wish, and not only into a personal wish but also by being able to address this wish to a wider range of users. Although nominated for the Melkweg Award the jury recognizes in Simon Dogger a true René Smeets Award winner for his professional approach and the completeness of each of the separate elements of the product-service-system of the Emotion Whisperer.
Melkweg Award
The Melkweg Award winner Marie Caye, one of the persons of the first class graduates of Design Academy Eindhoven's newest department, Food Non Food brought the jury into a world of where robots and machines will take an independent place in society and interact in our current economic system. Instead of creating doom scenarios and feeding on the fear of the replacement of humans, Marie Caye embraces the machine; Marie translated her starting point, a deep fascination of automated production lines and machines, into the food industry and created SAM, the Symbiotic Autonomous Machine. The jury was particularly impressed by how Marie Caye elaborated her concept into a completely out-of-the-box, but optimistic future scenario, a multi-layered and well-thought thesis and a well-executed and detailed working prototype.
The jury for the René Smeets Award and the Melkweg Award of 2017 are:
Gerard Baten, senior designer at Daf Trucks and alumnus DAE
Tineke Beunders, founder and designer at Ontwerpduo and alumnus DAE
Olga Coolen, director of Philips Museum
José Maase, head of design at Royal Mosa and alumnus DAE
Martijn Paulen, director of Dutch Design Foundation
In General
Also, this year the jury was very impressed by the high level of quality in the presentations and the work of the bachelor students. The effort and dedication the DAE teachers team put into the guidance of the nominated alumni, but also the commitment that each of the alumni put in their graduation works are overwhelming. Although you might not be the winner of one of the Awards, you should consider the nomination as an Award. Your department head and the team of teachers see in you a talent that you should nurture, cherish and allow to / give room to grow.
In this year’s selection the jury saw a strong urge in deconstructing a concept to its bare essence and reviewing the concept from different angles (like, meaning in society, sustainability, aesthetics, human behaviour, interaction) to transform the concept still into a tangible object, whether it be a material research, a product, a system or a thesis.
Gijs Bakker Award
A thorough and complete research leading to an anthropology of the portable flush toilet in the area of Cape Town (South Africa). Nadine Botha’s 'The politics of Shit', was voted as this year's winner of the Gijs Bakker award - the most outstanding Master graduate. The jury was impressed by Nadine’s capacity to deconstruct one object, unravelling a diversity of meanings from the social to the economical, from the mundane to the philosophical.
Nadine developed for her project a rich vocabulary, employing different media and contexts, through which The Politics of Shit became a celebration of humanity and a quest for agency.
The jury recognizes in Nadine the true recipient of the Gijs Bakker Award and would be honoured to reward her for her graduation project, which reveals the role of design as a tool of control and as a tool of emancipation. At the same time the jury wants to acknowledge the DAE decision for the choice to introduce a new master department on writing and curating, enabling design and the designer to escape the often-narrow confinements of display.
The jury for the Gijs Bakker Award of 2017 are:
Guus Beumer, director of Het Nieuwe Instituut
Evelyn Beer, senior art and design advisor at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science
In General
The jury wants to express its respect for the work of the nominated alumni of the master programmes. Not only did they all present their graduation projects with dedication, the way in which all of them found a possible approach to their topics, impressed and fascinated the jury. The jury celebrates the diversity of outcomes; each project presented another universe, another potential. The jury would like to extend its complements to the DAE’s master team for the quality of their guidance, while at the same time strengthening a series of innovative perspectives on design and the role of the designer.