DAE Introduction Week

So, here I was, finally at Holland, at Eindhoven, at the Design Academy; two years of waiting, of preparing, summed up on this moment. We were ‘welcomed’ by the coordinator of the masters department, Anna Crossetti with very clear words: you will be treated as young professional designers, so act as one. We were warned on how demanding it will be, and how only ourselves would be responsible for ourselves; than, she introduced the coaches who lead us through all the introduction week: Mark van der Gronden, Job and David; our first task? Go shopping… to second-hand shops. We had to find an archetypical object which shape we could transform into another recognizable archetypical object. I went for the tire of a bike and then thinking of the shapes got to another archetypical object: a clock (which shares most of it’s morphological qualities).

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The following days, we basically work on the 2nd assignment, which consisted on a wooden box, with a plastic lid that would store a precious object of us, casted in tin. It was basically to get in touch with the materials and processes present at the Academy. I wanted to do something that seemed very ‘squared’, almost like if it wasn’t a box, but that it started to surprise you once you interacted with it, plus it forced you to seek for the wooden piece that carried the ‘treasure’.

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On friday, the last day of the introduction week, we had a workshop at the old Schellens factory, where we ought to do a shelter using cardboard. Mark gave us some examples on what could this ‘shelters’ be, maybe broadening the idea that some (at least I) had, taking as reference things as shells, coats, tents, etc. I wanted to make the best of only 1 sheet of cardboard, trying to not loose any material by cutting it, just folding. I explored different kind of folding and got to a very simple solution with a few folds and rubber bands, which allows it to get the shape of the body bending.

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On Tuesday, after the introduction week, we had a small ‘exhibition’ with all the work done in the past week, which was going to bee seen by Gijs Bakker, head of the Masters Department, Anne Mieke Eggenkamp, head of the Academy and most of who were going to be our mentors in the first year of school. Personally, I think it was a really interesting week, for we didn’t have to much time to stop-and-think, but rather think-doing and take decisions on-the-go; now I realize it helped us to tune in the orientation of the Academy.

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