By Katie Dominy /asdf 11-06-2009

The DMY Design festival Berlin (3-7 June 2009) presented over 550 international designers at over 100 different events spread over the city. The Dutch Design Focus featured exhibitions by Studio Makkink & Bey, Designhuis and Material Sense, plus lectures by Lidewij Edelkoort, Jan Jongert and Jurgen Bey as well as eating design by Marije Vogelzaang of Proef.

The DMY Symposium held 3 June focused on three main topics: sustainability, alternative strategies of design (such as open design and participatory concepts) and the future role of the designer.

Design.nl spoke to Jurgen Bey from Studio Makkink & Bey, whose lecture was entitled ‘In The Perspective Of Nonsense And Other Senses That Make No Sense’. Bey's lecture centred on the concept that designers should focus less on objects of ownership, but address the serious problems of an undesigned society. Instead of designing such objects as chairs, designers should consider society itself as the raw material. "Design is like ice skating," he says. "We see old films of ice skating in the past. They do it well but they look clumsy compared to skaters of today. They are not worse, just different."

He points out that students previously designed specific objects, mainly consumer products. But with the coming of the computer, the designer's new tool, the process and emphasis of design has changed. “With so much information available designers must respond to the present world with an increased sense of responsibility. To design for shopping is not enough. It will not serve the future generation.”

“The creative mind means living your thoughts. Designers need to concentrate on learning how to take intuition, which is how the creative process begins, through the many stages of development, ending with the product. And we must learn that what we don't own, we don't take care of.”

Bey notes that designers should adopt a broader view of society and consider social issues. He emphasises that the raw material is society itself. An example? “How do we design proper homes for an increasing population with decreasing space to build? This is the kind of question designers should be addressing, not what kind of kettle we should use.”

At the symposium, Bey says most of the speakers adopted this view, but three speakers made it their key point. And Berlin? Bey found Berlin to be an open city and admits to having a desire to live there. He finds it a city where stress is low and people care less about such things as a dress code. More importantly, he considers it a place where people can show freely what they have done and receive considered and often helpful responses. 'This is as far as I have got. What do you think?'

Bey was also one of the five judges who picked the three awards for best work at the festival. Of the three winners, two were graduates or students from Dutch schools.

The DMY Design jury nominated ‘The Idea of a tree’ by mischer’traxler as an award winner. The studio is made up of design duo Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler who met at on the IM-masters course at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Their project ‘The idea of a tree’ uses machinery that mimics the natural effects, such as weather, that occur to trees and translates these effects into products. Sunlight is used to create lamps and benches that take their shape and colour from the amount of sunlight available.

A second award winner was the Sandberg Institute with its ‘Domestic Making, a house of possibilities.’ The post-graduate institute, based in Amsterdam, presented the works of students at two locations. A show at the trendy bar Heinz Minki apartment in Berlin put the work in a real domestic situation, while the stand's layout at DMY Youngsters exhibition was a reconstruction partly based on the apartment. The project raised questions about sustainability, reuse and the necessity of new design in relation to daily life.

In addition, DMY and Dutch Design Fashion Architecture (Dutch DFA) invited more than 200 designers, producers and representatives of politics and industry to a special dinner with interactive food design presented by the Dutch designer Marije Vogelzang of Proef. Long buffet tables were based on eight different colours allowing the designer dinner to continue an ongoing exchange connecting design, industry and politics. Vogelzang continued this theme in her lecture focused on the eight angles from which she looks at eating design: Psychology, Culture, Senses, Nature, Action, Science, Technique and Society.

The Designhuis Eindhoven presented ‘Glass’, curated by Li Edelkoort with works by Collectie Utrecht, Royal Leerdam, Lotte van Laatum, Pieke Bergmans, Hans van Bentum, Frank Tjepkema, Arnout Visser, among others. Li Edelkoort also gave the final keynote speech at the symposium entitled ‘The Farm of the Future: Lifestyle from 2010 to 2050 and beyond’.

Images symposium speakers: Jurgen Bey, Li Edelkoort, Jan Jongert, Hans Venhuizen, Marije Vogelzang, Erik van Buuren
Photography: Federico Testa

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