The inaugural edition of 4 Weeks of FreeDesigndom brought style, imagination and experiment to numerous venues in Amsterdam and Utrecht in 2008. Festival organiser Premsela had a hand in several of its 20-odd new and previously existing component events. Premsela was a partner in the first Dutch edition of the
ExperimentaDesign biennial and its Sunday Adventure Club,
Platform21’s exhibition
Platform21 = Hacking IKEA
, and
Streetlab’s urban fashion and art show.
Early market research indicates the public rated the programme highly. FreeDesigndom achieved its main goals of generating international publicity and increasing visitor numbers – which totalled 203,000 – for the 15 events, which included ExperimentaDesign, Inside Design Amsterdam, and the Dutch Artistic Research Event. FreeDesigndom’s combined programme helps to make larger and smaller Dutch design and fashion events more competitive internationally. We look forward to the 2009 edition. To stay updated, visit
www.freedesigndom.com or email
info@freedesigndom.com .
After four successful Lisbon editions, the biennial ExperimentaDesign launched its Amsterdam edition during 4 Weeks of FreeDesigndom. The 2008 theme was Space and Place: Design for the Urban Landscape. ExperimentaDesign examined cities’ role as playgrounds for global citizens through events such as exhibitions, conferences and open discussions. A main feature, the
Sunday Adventure Club, comprised an exhibition, an urban design project and bike tours. The exhibition shed light on real-life urban living in Berlin and New York and virtual 'living' on the Web. Curator Ester van de Wiel directed visitors to forgotten and neglected places in Amsterdam where residents were using open space to express themselves. They were also able to visit neglected spaces in inner Amsterdam that had been repurposed by young designers and locals.
Streetlab helped to kick off FreeDesigndom with a showcase of work by young urban designers and artists. Members of the public attended fashion shows, photography exhibitions, pop-up shops, workshops, musical performances and a ‘Streetlab supermarket’ in a temporary venue built of shipping containers beside the new Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA station. Under the guidance of pros, a group of talented young people also designed their own clothing collections, which they unveiled in a closing show.
The appropriation and adaptation of flat-pack furniture into a wide array of personalized objects has become a cultural phenomenon. In September,
Platform21 exhibited various IKEA hacks, from a 'sex bed' to an illusionist's cabinet, dreamt up by designers, artists and other IKEA customers.
Platform21 = Hacking IKEA
boasted contrarian furniture and objects Ingvar Kamprad never could have imagined.
Form follows function. When in doubt, wear red. If you know design, you know the rules people have written about it. But does that mean you have to stick to them? 4 Weeks of FreeDesigndom says design diktats are ridiculous! This diverse, broad programme of spectacular design and fashion events refuses to play by the rules. The Netherlands has always offered sanctuary to well-known philosophers and artists; in that tradition, FreeDesigndom is a free port for design.
We asked advertising agency Lemon Scented Tea to devise a campaign that would underline this fact. They gave us RidiculousDesignRules. Designer and early graffiti artist Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman applied his signature ‘calligraffiti’ style to ten design rules, like “A picture is worth a thousand words,” “Form follows function,” “Fashion is designed to go out of fashion” and “Less is more.”
At
www.ridiculousdesignrules.com, you’ll find articles on well-known designers and events as well as our top ten design mandates. Readers can comment and submit their own rules, photos and clips. Join the community and let us know what you think.
4 Weeks of FreeDesigndom, a Premsela initiative, is a new highlight on the international design calendar. It presents a wide variety of cutting-edge design and fashion to aficionados and the general public.
Popular, well-known events affiliated with FreeDesigndom in 2008 included
Inside Design Amsterdam, Dutch
Elle
magazine’s annual showcase of leading-edge interior design;
Via Milano New Dutch Design, a major exhibition of the year’s top design works at the
Woonbeurs home fair; and
Picnic, Europe’s leading annual event on creativity and innovation in the media and technology.
On the edgier side, talented designers occupied temporary home studios in the capital’s most infamous neighbourhood under the auspices of the Red Light Design Amsterdam project. Meanwhile,
Red Light Fashion Amsterdam placed mannequins in cutting-edge outfits in the windows where ladies of the night once posed. And Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum took to the streets with a series of innovative art and design exhibitions. One object, Niels van Eijk and Miriam van der Lubbe’s portable Construction Shed, will serve as the museum’s new home.
In Utrecht, FreeDesigndom hosted the
Dutch Artistic Research Event. The
Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (MaHKU) annually holds this provocative assembly of exhibitions, lectures and an international design symposium. In 2008, prominent international participants addressed the theme of spatial design as a potential source of critical thinking about culture.
The city also saw a special edition of the biennial
Utrecht Manifest. This ambitious 10-week collection of exhibitions, discussions and workshops examines contemporary design from a sociopolitical perspective. The standout element in 2008 was a lecture by Caracas-based architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, known for their architectural concepts for slums.
Other highlights in Utrecht included a Gerrit Rietveld exhibition at Utrecht’s
Centraal Museum.
FreeDesigndom’s aim is to surprise visitors with new angles on design and fashion with an international sensibility. The cities are doing their part by creating a festival atmosphere. FreeDesigndom will continue to endeavour to bring more events under its umbrella, encourage new ones, and publicise them internationally.
