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Surrounded by design TEXT & PHOTOS: DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN
Design Academy Eindhoven. This school was established in 1947 and focuses totally on design and offers a Bachelor and Master course to its students. Dutch design is well known for its functionality, its originality and its typical approach on how to deal with questions and problems. Design Academy Eindhoven challenges its students to come up with original solutions for everyday questions and problems.
Design surrounds us and is everywhere although very often unnoticed by the user. Everything around the human being has been designed. If you are in your living room, the dining table, the wallpaper, chairs, sofa and carpet; they are all the outcome of a creative process. And look at your desk: every piece of paper, your mobile phone, your laptop, every colour, every shape and every application has been designed and/or engineered. Go outside and look at your car, your bicycle, the train or even the streetlamps. A designer thought about it before production could even start. Either purchased in a design furniture store or at Ikea, always a designer or group of designers made decisions about shape, colour, material et cetera. Naturally this says nothing about the value of the product. Neither does it determine if the product is beautiful or dis-
tasteful. That is up to the user to decide. In the world of design, Dutch designers play a prominent role. The products developed by the Dutch are appreciated throughout the world and ‘Dutch Design’ became synonymous for products that combine self-evident shapes and userfriendliness with beauty and originality.
About 40 per cent of our student population has an international background. All teachers only teach at Eindhoven for one day a week and have an established practice as designer or artist. Through this, Design Academy Eindhoven students are constantly challenged to go beyond borders, since there lies the unexpected solutions that lead to good design.
A vast majority of the internationally wellknown Dutch designers were educated at
Issue 12 | December 2014 | 37