Light-hearted, conceptual, experimental, self-produced; Dutch design has a well-defined personality in the crowded world of design and this book ventures the reader into the very private rooms of it.
Large photographs and detailed texts unveil the workplaces, inspiration sources and creative approaches of 15 Dutch designers: Hella Jongerius, Studio Job, Marcel Wanders, Ineke Hans and Bertjan Pot among others.
"Bertjan Pot is at his best when there is no question. If there's a question, he'll want to start by answering it. But when the field is wide open, ideas present themselves almost automatically."
"Ineke Hans furniture seems to be so much designed as pain-stakingly traced by a child's hand. Hans prides herself on the utter simplicity of her designs. She consistently strives for designs that are as unambiguous as a pictogram."
The book has a warm confidential allure, designers are presented in an intimate way, immersed in their own offices and surrounded by their products, prototypes, people and favorite objects.
You can see them in action or having lunch with their teams, look around their offices as if you were an invisible guest or intuit their inventive paths when navigating the nicely revealing photographs that illustrate the book.
"Hella Jongerius strives to unite craft and industry, and she gets a charge out of coming up with something that is unique, but at the same time suitable for industrial production. Especially since this is simply beyond the reach of art."
If you are interested in the way things are thought and created, if you are one of those that turn the chair upside down to see how it's made before actually sitting on it, you will surely enjoy to dive into the creative worlds of these designers as much as we did.
