DDW#25
5 min readEvery October, Eindhoven turns into a design city. In 2025 I visited Marc for the 25th edition of Dutch Design Week. Marc is doing his master's in GEO—Design at Design Academy Eindhoven, and he knows the city's studios, workshops and back courtyards better than any map.
I wasn't alone: Poldi, Karla and Vivi, who is currently studying at TU Delft, came along. We slept in a retired campervan on a flax farm outside the city, the farm behind Back to the Flax, a project by the student collective Kazerne Young. Every morning we got on our bikes, rented from Velorent at the old gas factory, and rode from the quiet fields into the busiest week of the Eindhoven year. Yellow "Fietsverhuur Dutch Design Week" signs pointed the way from the station, and the paper map with its pink districts became our second most important tool. DDW doesn't happen in one hall. It is spread across the whole city, so the bike was the best ticket we had.
The 25th edition ran under the motto "Past. Present. Possible." and you could feel all three. At Strijp-S, the former Philips grounds, the banners with the big "25" waved between factory buildings and the green balconies of the Trudo Vertical Forest. In the Kazerne, Hydro showed R100: new pieces by Sabine Marcelis, Stefan Diez, Cecilie Manz and others, made from aluminium harvested from old greenhouses and light poles around Eindhoven. A few rooms further, Kazerne Young showed Back to the Flax, following flax from seed to material. Seeing those tall, hairy flax sculptures after our nights on the farm felt almost personal.
At Piet Hein Eek's we wandered through the workshop and the shop. We saw 3D-printed stools in candy colours and a street planter printed in bright red layers. There were hands growing out of a green wall, typography in molten metal, and a window with a single, heavy ampersand. And we found the German Design Graduates, a small piece of home in the middle of it all.
In between there was coffee at Otis, sitting on red and blue folding chairs while the autumn leaves came down. There were dinners under string lights and long talks about materials, schools and what we want to make next.
I'm still thinking about how open everything felt: studios with their doors wide open, students next to established names, and a whole city as one big exhibition. Eindhoven, I'll be back.
I wasn't alone: Poldi, Karla and Vivi, who is currently studying at TU Delft, came along. We slept in a retired campervan on a flax farm outside the city, the farm behind Back to the Flax, a project by the student collective Kazerne Young. Every morning we got on our bikes, rented from Velorent at the old gas factory, and rode from the quiet fields into the busiest week of the Eindhoven year. Yellow "Fietsverhuur Dutch Design Week" signs pointed the way from the station, and the paper map with its pink districts became our second most important tool. DDW doesn't happen in one hall. It is spread across the whole city, so the bike was the best ticket we had.
The 25th edition ran under the motto "Past. Present. Possible." and you could feel all three. At Strijp-S, the former Philips grounds, the banners with the big "25" waved between factory buildings and the green balconies of the Trudo Vertical Forest. In the Kazerne, Hydro showed R100: new pieces by Sabine Marcelis, Stefan Diez, Cecilie Manz and others, made from aluminium harvested from old greenhouses and light poles around Eindhoven. A few rooms further, Kazerne Young showed Back to the Flax, following flax from seed to material. Seeing those tall, hairy flax sculptures after our nights on the farm felt almost personal.
At Piet Hein Eek's we wandered through the workshop and the shop. We saw 3D-printed stools in candy colours and a street planter printed in bright red layers. There were hands growing out of a green wall, typography in molten metal, and a window with a single, heavy ampersand. And we found the German Design Graduates, a small piece of home in the middle of it all.
In between there was coffee at Otis, sitting on red and blue folding chairs while the autumn leaves came down. There were dinners under string lights and long talks about materials, schools and what we want to make next.
I'm still thinking about how open everything felt: studios with their doors wide open, students next to established names, and a whole city as one big exhibition. Eindhoven, I'll be back.
#ddw25#dutchdesignweek#eindhoven#pastpresentpossible#designtravel#geodesign
October 2026
