In his role as ambassador of Dutch Design Week 2017, Winy Maas together with research think-thank, The Why FactoryFactory, Gemeente Eindhoven, Technical University Eindhoven, and DDW curate four interventions in Eindhoven exploring Future City Products.
Products of the future city in The Future City is Wide by The Why Factory, Copy Paste, a bad ass guide for becoming a Starchitect, (W)ego, a 9 meter high, habitable installation and ICI Eindhoven: Here we come about the future of the city of Eindhoven, with workshops on the question: What do the Eindhovenaars want?
“For my DDW ambassadorship, I want to focus on future city products. Products are the core of design, whilst the future is central to Dutch Design Week,’’ says Winy Maas, co-founder MVRDV. “The city is my core business so together, the focus is clear: future city products that will change our cities and our world. These visions are made by students, by participants, by designers.”
In a world experiencing dramatic climate change, declining resources, huge differences in income, extensive political/social disagreement, rapid population growth, substantial consumption of space, Design disciplines must work on these issues and provide solutions.
What products can facilitate this enterprise? And what is the future city they can create? The Future City is many things. Endless possibilities lie before us, too many to visualise or even count. The interventions at Dutch Design Week investigate just a few of these futures and more are going to be explored.
The Future City is Flexible
The installation in the Markt Square in Eindhoven. Nine rooms are made from an idealistic but egoistic perspective including a panorama room, a stair room, a sky room and more. Users must negotiate with each other to create their ideal room in a limited space. How to defend your ideals? They start to circle around each other. And somehow, they become maybe even richer. With intrusions and negotiations, one has the feeling that there is something interesting happening next door as well. Why not visit? Ego becomes Wego. The installation, a walkable 9-meter high folly with 9 hotel rooms, shows a frozen moment of the interactive process.
The Future City is Wide
A film shown at the entrance of the Klokgebouw exhibition centre shows the beauty of the possible. Sorted per agenda point, hundreds of ideas from students of The Why Factory illustrate and speculate on the wide of the possible future city. Yes, it is possible!
The Future City has Memories
A presentation and book launch in the Klokgebouw (at the ABN AMRO Auditorium) of the new book by The Why Factory: “Copy Paste. A Badass Copy Guide.” The publication shows the evolutionary aspects of architecture in a provocative manner, works of architecture are further developed as if they were science, in this way a famous bridge can become a hospital.
The Future City is Eindhoven
The presentation in the Stadhuisplein Square of Eindhoven of the masterclass about the intensification of uses in Eindhoven’s city centre. The work, undertaken by students from several universities shows a wide variety of towers that could be built in the centre of Eindhoven one day. This event is a kick-off for Winy Maas’ supervisory role for Eindhoven’s inner city and he starts by asking citizens and discuss the future of their city.
The installations have been made possible with help from many sponsors including De Meeuw, Dutch Design Week, Gemeente Eindhoven, Van Beek Art Supplies, TU Delft, TU Eindhoven and Keeper Development.
Dutch Design Week takes place between 21 - 29 October and for more information, tickets and how to visit please check the website here