The Design Academy Eindhoven’s 2024 Graduation Show was held in the large coworking spaces of Microstad in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, from October 19-27 during the Dutch Design Week. Students across undergraduate and postgraduate programs showcased over 200 projects that investigated pressing global concerns in an attempt to provide solutions, raise awareness and encourage discourse, all centred around harmonious cohabitation. With the help of digital technologies, concepts and auditory and visual presentations, the graduate showcase delved into addressing the radical shifts within social, cultural and environmental contexts of the present.

The exhibition spaces were divided into three primary areas: the garage, gallery and bookshop, where audio-visual and art installations, conventional design exhibits, theses and literary works were on display respectively. This year, apart from the traditional, physical design exhibitions, the design fair featured several audio-centric, virtual projects and multimedia installations focusing on auditory memory, social security and digital privacy. While some projects specifically addressed the workings of the architectural industry by proposing new ways of analysing and reusing architectural waste such as concrete and glass, the others addressed broader environmental concerns and long-term global crises. The students did not shy away from approaching sensitive, empathetic and socio-culturally challenging issues, as well as thorny themes such as depression or death in their projects. STIR enlists six outstanding innovative design projects from the exhibition where the students examine their role as designers and find their purpose as they prepare to step into an uncertain and rapidly changing world.

Through the Kitchen

With the increase in the popularity of open kitchens, this project challenges the balance between transparency and privacy. Through the Kitchen, Chloe Couasnon’s new model for a functional and atmospheric restaurant space shifts the design perspective from the customer to the staff. A partition-to-shelf system allows staff members to make specific visual choices and offer customers a glimpse into the kitchen. The project seeks to function in tandem with comfort, highlighting the interactions between staff and guests. From the subtle movements of silhouettes to the precise functioning of the kitchen, the project emphasises attention to what is chosen to be visible.

Subderma

Do rigid preservation practices, aiming to turn heritage into an archive, risk the loss of artisanal skills? Kiki Astner delves into deep research of the history and origin of the craft of processing deerskin, performed by just 38 people in Austria today. Extensively studying the material and its use, she sheds light on der Säckler, a tailor who has produced Lederhosen for centuries. Astner explores why an age-old technique ought to be developed instead of being preserved almost like an archive; conservative practices can limit the potential for the skill to survive. The project questions folkloric applications and industrially established methods of leather production—envisioning ways to revive artisanal heritage.

mnemotope magazine – (re)organising publishing

“The publishing world can be intimidating for writers at all stages. Mnemotope is a community magazine that operates on a broad, unthemed open call, allowing submissions ranging from essays and poetry to transcribed voice notes,” reads the official release of Mnemotope magazine – (re)organising publishing. This project by Lilou Angelrath and Réiltín O’Hagan investigates the current landscape of independent publishing and the transformative potential of collectivity. Through its development, Angelrath and O’Hagan delve into outreach, distribution, design and engagement, supported by interviews with industry professionals and theoretical study. The project also features an interactive installation that documents mnemotope’s development.

Can CCTV See the Electric Frog?

Ahmet Selcuk Dis’ series of transformative garments that evade the gaze of surveillance cameras takes cues from the ability of octopuses and frogs to camouflage. To blend into urban environments, the pieces are created using techniques such as UV and thermo-reactive prints and bistable auxetic surfaces, an advanced 3D printing technique that allows the garments to effortlessly change colour and shape. Echoing the resilience of their animal counterparts, the garments become an activist tool, reclaiming the autonomy of their wearers and enhancing their adaptability in an environment of digital oppression.

The Solar Share

Katharina Ammann explores the potential of harnessing the overabundant solar energy through The Solar Share production laboratory, which is a horizontal photobioreactor prototype that utilises photosynthetic organisms’ ability to harvest the power of the Sun. A Spirulina algae farm, as small as one square metre, produces consumable solar energy that can be accounted for in solar share units. The project urges multiple stakeholders such as professionals from environmental science, biotechnology and energy sciences, as well as policymakers to re-evaluate the worth of the renewable energy resource while considering sustainability and alternative currency forms.

New Weird Hope

The uncomfortable, unsettling and thought-provoking project New Weird Hope by Doris Sisková explores the absurd realities of normalised misery in modern times, portraying them as collective concerns instead of an individual issue. Through a mixed media spatial installation and a film trailer for a conceptual video game, the project is a multi-dimensional manifestation of the New Weird genre of literature that urges the viewers to break free from the confinement of their beliefs and perspectives. Proposing a weird, temporal and absurd introspection, the project helps the visitors to form a new outlook and develop a unique understanding of intolerable realities.

Perhaps one of the most radical projects, New Weird Hope could be born out of a young designer’s frustration towards the ones who came before them, who let the world reach such a dire situation; audaciously declaring that the young generation’s misery is their own folly, refusing to take accountability for their failures. As author Katie Treggiden asserted about the Graduate Show 2023, in looking at young people for hope, “Despair is not the soil in which creativity thrives.” If one can see beyond despair through rationality or absurdity, perhaps a personal yet collective philosophical inquiry of radical hope would emerge.