10x Must-sees at Dutch Design Week

Hey design lover! A visit to Dutch Design Week (DDW) is probably high on your agenda. First time visiting? Be sure to check out this handy guide. Have you been to DDW before? Then you know: even with nine days, you'll run out of time. But no stress, these must-sees will give you the absolute highlights of the festival.

Graduation Show @Microstad

Are you short on time? Stop reading and head straight to the Graduation Show at Microstad. We could go on and on, but honestly, this entire exhibition is a must-see. More than 200 graduates from Design Academy Eindhoven show what they have been working on all year: from material research to designs that mostly ask you an uncomfortable question. Want to know more about this DDW tip? We wrote about it right here.

Manifestations @VEEM

Have you even been to Dutch Design Week if you haven’t visited Manifestations? Partly because it is free, but mostly because of what is in there: a little stubborn, a little provocative, and always trying something new. More than 50 young artists, many of them fresh out of art school, dig into the (mis)matches between people and technology. This year's theme is MUTE: how technology shapes what we hear, what we say, and what we share. Who gets a voice? Who gets drowned out? And when do we hit mute ourselves, on purpose or without noticing?

The Biodesign Warehouse @Klokgebouw

At Klokgebouw, Emma van der Leest is building a bio-design department store. Not your average one: everything on the shelves has been grown or fermented by bacteria, fungi, and algae. You will find cosmetics, fashion, packaging, and building materials. Emma is one of the two DDW Beacons, pioneers who show where the field is heading. She prefers to call herself a bioneer, by the way.

Grand Projects @various locations

Big, bigger, biggest: eight large installations pop up in the city center and at Strijp-S, all free to visit. At 18 Septemberplein, three trailers turn into BLAUPAUSE: a stage, a grandstand, and a kiosk made of bright blue wood. On Demer, Luca Ortmann builds a place to wait and play out of yellow steel tubes, called Waiting for the Bus. And at Strijp-S, you walk through a web of cameras, screens, and voices in Blind Spots, discovering how (un)safe other people feel. The other Grand Projects? You will run into them anyway. The name says it all; they are hard to miss!

Forward Furniture @Building TX

Last year, Forward Furniture took over De Caai; this year, it moves to Building TX on Achtseweg Zuid at Strijp-T: a former machine factory taking part in DDW for the first time. Around a hundred international designers each show three pieces of furniture from one collection, set out in a landscape of carpet. The show is curated by Liv Vaisberg, who is also behind COLLECTIBLE, the fair for collectible design in Brussels and New York.

Radical Chains @Kazerne

At Kazerne on Paradijslaan, they do not quite know yet where all of this is heading. That is not sloppiness; it is the whole point: Radical Chains is a research project that will run for years, and during DDW, you get to see the first results and prototypes. Designers are teaming up with scientists and entrepreneurs on themes such as food, housing, and the landscape. Their starting point: no band-aids on a system that does not work, but working out how it should work instead.

House of Lights @Ketelhuisplein

As always, Ketelhuisplein has something that catches your eye. This year, it is a 3D-printed house, made from recycled materials. Not a miniature, but a house at full size. Each façade rolled out of the printer at TAM Industries in one piece. Just try to picture how huge that printer must be. Why is it called the House of Lights? You will find out after sunset.

Class of 26 @Klokgebouw

You never know what you will find at Class of, and that is exactly why people keep coming back. At Class of 26 in Klokgebouw, students from Dutch and international design schools get to show their work to a wide audience. A few of them: Artemis, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Hochschule Luzern, and Vilnius Academy of Arts. Short on time? Each school puts one project in the spotlight, and together these make up the Avenue of Fresh Perspectives.

Design x digital @Building SFF

Gebouw SFF on Torenallee is taking part in DDW for the first time, and you can still feel the old Strijp-S here. Bare concrete, high halls and a rough industrial edge. A nice contrast with what is inside, because the thread running through most of the shows is what digital technology does to us. RE:GISTER asks you a difficult question: would you share your own data to win back a stranger's privacy? And at I am [not] a Robot you prove you are human without ticking a box.

transparent.citizen @amaranth studio

This tip takes you outside the usual DDW areas, to the Hemelrijken neighborhood, but the detour is more than worth it. Designer Mees Boeijen locks himself up for a week and hands his daily life over to an AI completely. It tracks his movements and prints them out as a record of his life. Reading along? Then you are being watched too.