Considered the largest design event in Northern Europe, Dutch Design Week (DDW) welcomed thousands of visitors in Eindhoven for 10 days to see and experience new solutions in product design, spatial design, textile & fashion, design management & trends and graphic design.

Over 350.000 visitors joined the 2019 edition. (Ph: DDW)

DDW organized and facilitated exhibitions, lectures, prize ceremonies, networking events, debates and festivities in more than 100 locations across the city. The event concentrated on the designs of the future, with an emphasis on experiment, innovation and crossovers and the development of young talent.

This year’s theme was ‘If not now, then when?’ and the projects shared a focus on innovative sustainable materials that can be scaled up, becoming part of circular or low-waste systems. The show delved into new technologies and concepts that can also help make our lives less resource intensive.

Throughout the showcase, products made out of agricultural and industrial by-products such as dung, nutshells and bauxite feature, and the latest generation of products made from bioplastics, but there was space for more poetic installations as well.

With 2,600 designers in attendance, 120 locations involved, 450 events and themes ranging from artificial nature; bio design and material innovations; circularity; healthy textiles; privacy and gender/identity on the program, the 2019 edition of Dutch Design Week was big and exciting.

The omnipresent technology at the Dutch Design Week was no coincidence, DDW director Martijn Paulen said in design magazine Dezeen: “It is precisely in the overlap between technology and creativity that the answers for the future can be found. When you put technological innovation in the hands of creative people, the really interesting things start to happen.”

DDW included a set of design routes, which participants could take all over the city. There were eight in total, focused on issues such as art and collectables, future living, social design and architecture and public space. They each took between five and six hours to do.

For the first time ever, Dutch Design Week hosted a series of talks during the week. The themes of the talks were the same as the Design Routes. As well as the talks and routes, there were also other events to check out at Dutch Design Week. These were anything from a networking event to a workshop.

DDW started twelve years ago as a non-commercial fair where design, industry and business could talk to each other on ‘neutral’ ground. Since then, the event grew rapidly each year, to its more than 350.000 visitors this year.

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