By Katie Dominy / 30-06-2009

Sofia Design Week (SDW) took place over 5-12 June 2009 and included many special events, forums and workshops. Design.nl reviews a selection of the festival’s events featuring Dutch designers.

Shadow Life is an exhibition put together by industrial designer Chris Kabel, who talks to Design.nl about his project.

How did you come to be invited to the Sofia Design Week?
I have been in contact for a year with a very nice little design gallery called artnewscafe in Plovdiv, a city south of Sofia and they proposed me to the curators of Sofia Design Week. I was eager to participate because I was curious to find out more about the Eastern European design context.

Why the Shadow Life project?
I was looking for a new way to show design objects in general and my designs, in particular. Because the ideas behind most of my objects revolve around some kind of use, I wanted to highlight this aspect in the presentation of my objects. I did this by using a shadow that interacts with the objects in various ways; the shadow brings the objects to life, so to speak. It lights the Flames candelabra and switches on the Sticky Lamps, smokes a cigarette while sitting on the Mesh Chair and is surrounded by falling leafs when walking under the Shady Lace parasol...

What aspects of Sofia Design Week impressed you the most?
One thing that really struck me was the enthusiasm of the organisation and the public. There is a real hunger for broadening up the definition of what design might be in Eastern Europe, and Bulagria in particular, I think.

During my lecture I showed some photographs I took of some typically Bulgarian situations and objects. I wanted to stimulate them to have a look at their own past and culture, because, actually, it is a very rich and inventive culture. For instance, I showed an image of a fence made out of radiators, and another beautifully constructed fence made of iron scraps, probably made in socialist times when resources were scarce - and the public went completely crazy! They started applauding when confronted with their own inventiveness! I think there is a lot of work to be done here still, but there is a growing group of people that wants to go beyond the cheap glitz of gold-chromed lampshades and faux marble tabletops. I am positive these people will successfully re-evaluate and reinforce Bulgarian identity.

Studio REFORMA organised an exhibition entitled ‘Dutch Design in the Tower’. The Bulgarian Studio REFORMA is run by Boyan Raytchev and Emiliya Angelova. Raytchev tells us, “We run an online design store, but also organise temporary shops/design events like this one. In fact, we just started our business in December and this was our first exhibition - we chose Dutch design as a theme, because we fell in love with it while spending a year studying for our MA in the city of Maastricht.”

“For our exhibition, we wanted to focus on product design for everyday use. There were many other expositions on design, so we wanted to differ and show how design can fully enter your daily life. We chose a beautiful old water tower for the event and displayed products from many studios, including the Domoor mug and Lootable by Richard Hutten, products from Goods including pieces from Henk Stallinga that have just been introduced into the Goods collection, Royal VKB's wonderful innovative kitchen products, Sloom en Slordig's Pile Cab and Extended Cab and ceramics from Cor Unum.”

Werkplaats Typografie (WT), the Arnhem MA graphics course, showed an exhibition entitled 'School School', curated by WT 2008 graduate Velina Stoykova; a celebration of the course’s 10th anniversary.

Stoykova says, “I called the exhibition 'School School', because the show was held in the gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts; in that way we had one school in an other. Both schools are very different, even more through the fact that in Bulgaria we use the Cyrillic alphabet and in Holland the Latin is used. I ordered the works in alphabetical order because WT is a lot about typography and typography is a major subject in the graphic design. Cyrillic looks very similar to Latin, and still is different. I used both alphabets simultaneously. I also translated some parts of the texts of Armand Mevis (WT co-founder) called Unschooling (the name was also very suitable). In that article Armand explains very well what WT is, and actually, WT doesn't want to be associated with the word ‘school,’ but rather with ‘studio.’ So, in that way, School School became more of a question, is it really a school? I think is very good that the exhibition took place in the academy. It was the perfect place. Its not saying: Look we are better! Not at all. It’s just showing alternatives.”

Visitors could also see TM-City, ‘Typographic Masonry City’, an exhibition in which designer Richard Niessen creates eight imaginary neighborhoods made out of over 150 works combining elements including fonts, shapes and colours. First shown in 2007, this work has already been shown in a number of countries.

Niessen was a speaker at the SDW lecture event, as was Chris Kabel, plus the following Dutch-based agencies and designers: Dima Stefanova and Henk Groenedyk of Icecream Design, Erik Kessels of Kesselskramer, typography studio LUST, designer Frank Tjepkema and Piek Suyling, chairman of the Amsterdam Creativity Exchange.

Main image: Shadow Life, Chris Kabel
Images 1-4: Dutch Design in the Tower, Studio REFORMA
Images 5-6: School School, Werkplaats Typografie.
Image 5 photography: Mihail Novakov

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