Dutch Design Week 2024: Our colour and craft highlights.

From laser-etched glazes and 3D printed equations, to carefully crafted dining experiences, Dutch Design Week 2024 offered inspiration by the bucketload.

We came away from this year’s event feeling thoroughly energised - having witnessed a wealth of experimental approaches towards colour and craft. Featuring both emerging and established designers alike, traditions were twisted and making methods re-imagined for the future.

Keen to share our findings with you, here are our top colour and craft spots from across the show.

Raw Color: Tesammans

Experimental studio, Raw Color harnesses hues to transform everyday objects. A staple at the show, for this year's Dutch Design Week, its limited-edition Tesammans collection, created in collaboration with IKEA was unveiled.

Now completely sold out, the collection investigates the powerful nature of colour in transforming spaces, playfully probing different shades as they react with light, materials, and movement.

“We started with coloured pencil sketches and pitched around fifty designs. Small-scale living and interaction between colours, and user with object had been the initial briefing”, answers Cristoph Brach, co-founder of Raw Color to our question about what sparked the design process.

“With this collection, we wanted to highlight the importance of infusing colour into the home. It can create more positivity and character than the common white and grey spaces", he adds.

Spanning graphics, textiles, product design and photography, Raw Color was founded by creative duo, Christoph Brach and Daniera ter Haar. Together with their team, and working with a host of international clients, the design studio explores different methods of materialising colour.

The sentiment that colour is a powerful expression of personality, that can have a positive impact on our well-being and our spaces is what Raw Color has built its design philosophy on, confidently pairing saturated primaries with light pastels in both deep and muted tones.

The colour combinations explored in Tesammans feel both versatile and distinctive, remaining true to Raw Color’s design aesthetic.

You can explore more of Raw Color’s portfolio of projects here and keep up to date on instagram.

Myeonga Seo: Ornamental Folds

Channeling a curiosity about materials and methods of making, Myeonga Seo’s graduate project ‘Ornamental Folds’ explores alternative techniques of crafting sheet metal.

Lending a soft, ornamental appearance to an industrial, and what can sometimes be regarded as an uninspiring material, Myeonga applies decorative incisions, which become three dimensional through folding. One of this year’s graduates from Design Academy Eindhoven, Myeonga questions the efficiency and creative possibilities that production metal bending machines truly offer, proposing new design possibilities.

Eradicating the need for specialised production bending machines, through digital design tools and laser-cutting, the Korean designer puts forward a fresh perspective on the crafting opportunities of sheet metal.

To learn more about Ornamental Folds, follow Myeonga’s craft developments on instagram.

Atelier Fig: The Gravity Collection

At Dutch Design Week 2024, Atelier Fig turned perceptions of ceramic craftsmanship on its head, quite literally.

Experimenting with the force of gravity, the dynamic design studio dips absorbent structures into liquid clay, which they then hang out to dry. As they dry, the structures fully deform under the weight of the added clay – gravity always having the final say.

Fusing unpredictable forces of nature with those that can be controlled, the process makes for a truly experimental approach towards ceramic sculpture.

The design duo behind Atelier Fig are Gijs Wouters and Ruben Hoogvliet, joining forces during their time at ArtEZ Academy in Arnhem.

Blending serendipity with precision, The Gravity Collection is a series of interior objects that playfully interrogates the material possibilities of clay.

Dive into the commissions and shop the samples of Atelier Fig here, as well as keep up to date with its upcoming activity on Instagram.

Wisse Trooster: Tangible Intangible

Bringing together five designers from a wide range of creative disciplines, ‘Tangible Intangible’ questions the role of touch in truly understanding a material.

Curated by Wisse Trooster in collaboration with Moooi Carpets, the participating designers were invited to create two-dimensional tapestries of their three-dimensional, tactile works.

Highlighting the importance of tactility to product experience, each artist’s three-dimensional artwork is presented alongside the tapestry, providing tangible material information.

The work of Wisse Trooster in particular caught our attention, who created a tapestry artwork of his award-winning Sanding Disk Wall Lamp.

Click here to explore more of Wisse’s creative projects, as well as follow him on Instagram.

Lucas Zito: BOUY OFFCUT

Balancing beauty with functionality Lucas Zito fabricates exquisite 3D printed lighting out of reclaimed and bio-sourced plastics.

Graduated from the Design Academy of Eindhoven and later setting up his studio in France during 2019, Lucas Zito presented BOUY OFFCUT at this year’s Dutch Design Week. This collection comprises a series of functional, light-providing sculptures, made from the by-products of his own production line.

Crafted from pieces that would have otherwise been thrown away, the off-cut series marries together imperfect shapes and sizes of Lucas’ well known BOUY collection. Offering both table lamps and pendants, each is unique and champions a sense of resourcefulness.

Click here to keep up to date with Lucas’ practice on Instagram, and here to explore his portfolio of projects to-date.

Amina Zemouli: The Mathematical Designer

Fascinated by the geometric capabilities of equations, Amina Zemouli was another one of our favourites from the Design Academy Eindhoven 2024 Graduate Show.

Applying her love for mathematics, Amina materialises the algorithmic patterns of equations into tangible, 3D forms.

Crafting lines of code, these sculptures bridge the gap between mathematical concept and human senses. Scripts that incorporate functions like Sine, Cosine, Exponential, and Square Root can yield both simple and intricate shapes.

Her collection ranges from basic forms, such as circles and cylinders to complex objects. Amina’s library of numeracy-based sculpture showcases her progress gaining fluency in this expressive language.

To learn more about Amina’s practice ‘Craft & Code’, click here. And follow Amina’s practice on Instagram.

Creative Chef Studio: Mixing Typologies

Stepping into a world of culinary craft, Creative Chef Studio’s exhibition ‘Mixing Typologies’ fuses photography, music, spatial design, textiles, and ceramics into re-envisioned immersive dining experiences.

Creative Chef Studio is a globally recognised, leading expert in multi-sensory storytelling and experience design.

The Mixing Typologies showcased the studio’s portfolio of curated works around food over the last ten years, including ceramic salad sets for determining plate compositions, to live and wild table cloths of greenery.

For its accomplished use of colour, the ‘Ceramic Bean’ series caught our attention. Collecting over seventy varieties of heirloom beans, the studio photographed 500 of them. Using this photography, Creative Chef Studio formulated the colours and glaze patterns for porcelain slip cast bean dishes, made in collaboration with POWERHOUSE ARTS Brooklyn.

“The role of craft and making is, in my opinion, the biggest opportunity for a designer to add meaningful layers into a dining experience", answers founder of Creative Chef Studio, Jasper Udink ten Cate, when asked about the importance of craft in curating memorable dining experiences.

“It adds an extra storytelling character and is capable of transforming a simple dinner into an immersive event that has the ability to become a memory for the guests. For me and the studio, the most important aspect of the craft and making process is the way it helps to refine and enrich the story I want to tell my audience".

Discover more about Creative Chef Studio here, and follow the studio on Instagram.

Sanne Kaal: Ray

Exploring the delicate interplay between light and material translucency, Ray is a porcelain light crafted by designer, Sanne Kaal.

Light is softened as it passes through the porcelain shade, emitting a gentle, diffused glow. Featuring a glossy-white glaze and a delicately implemented laser-engraved pattern, the lamp demonstrates the capabilities of a computer-controlled laser on ceramic.

Graduated as a product designer, Sanne Kaal channels her deep-set interest in material exploration into discovering innovative finishes, suitable for a wide range of objects and surfaces.

You can find out more about Sanne’s practice here, and keep up to date with them on Instagram.

Remi Reniers: Unfixed

In today’s fast-paced and linear culture of consumption, the enduring beauty and material potential of discarded natural stone are often overlooked. Offcuts, leftover construction material and furniture are frequently discarded, and sometimes pulverised. This heavily devalues the material, whilst causing significant waste and pollution.

Intrigued by the unique properties of stone, Remi Reniers - a recent graduate from Design Academy Eindhoven - has developed a method to transform this discarded material into modular building blocks. She calls this project ‘Unfixed’.

These blocks can be used for furniture, through use of reconfigurable steel connectors. This approach allows odd-shaped and various coloured stone pieces to be combined into functional and aesthetic furniture. Remi’s collection, featuring a side table, bench and shelf cupboard, showcases the unique beauty and ongoing functionality of stone, even after it has been discarded.

Remi’s portfolio of projects is available to view here, and her Instagram here.

Interested in exploring more of what Dutch Design Week 2024 had on offer? Details on this year’s themes, exhibitors, installations and talks can be found here.