Eindhoven based designers Maarten Kolk and Guus Kusters skillfully filter nature’s workings and materialize it into objects. Living with nature, the environment, history, time, colors and surroundings are indispensable sources of inspiration. Their work balances nature with culture and emphasizes the beauty of both worlds. Narrative connections, innovative use of materials and production processes lead them to make objects with a high level of aesthetic.

Maarten Kolk and Guus Kusters often take a natural phenomenon out of its context and integrate it with things we see, eat and touch everyday. This can be textures on animals, the motion of flying owls, fighting hares, which was the onset of their work ‘Avifauna’. Instead of mounting the skeletons of these animals with their own skin, they clothed them with materials from the human world that have corresponding traits. In the project ‘Watercourse’ they used unbleached, uncoated materials to make samples that were colored the blue-black ‘waste’ ink residue of a printer. In their latest project on acoustics for PROOFFLab, they mirror the softening properties of foggy clouds to make boxes that muffle, blur and package noisy things.

While researching into acoustics, Kolk and Kusters came to the conclusion that aural and visual tranquility is produced by very similar conditions and sets off the same sensation. In the words of Guus Kusters: ‘We quickly came to realize that silence is not the answer in this assignment for PROOFFLab. Removing sound doesn’t lead to just silence, but it changes your definition of noise. In a call center it’s probably easier to work undisturbed than in a room with one neighbor who’s constantly on the phone. In our view, it is the combination of sounds that predominate and the sharp tones causing unrest.’

Kolk and Kusters started to look for a way to reduce the sharpness of sounds in the immediate environment as well as to soften the noise of the visual surroundings. The designers recognized these properties in how foggy clouds don’t block or sharply divorce anything from its surroundings, rather, the fog adds to a certain calm. ‘We imagined what it would be like if you could place a cloud in your office, a very local fog bank, to package all chaos and roaring sounds around you.’ says Kusters.

By making rectangular cutouts of images of different weather types, they arrived at the idea of making boxes that mimic the softness, opaque look and the colors of clouds. This thought experiment was followed by testing materials and stretching them over a rectangular frame. Boxes in three different sizes were spanned by thin semi transparent latex. This material mutes sounds like a curtain does and it blurs in the way frosted glass puts everything in soft focus. The Cloud Boxes, as they came to be titled, come in three sizes for big, moderate, or small disorder. Large boxes might veil sections of a space or a bookcase, a lamp inside Cloud Box medium makes it a lampshade that spreads diffused light. With the small sized box you can hide things cluttering the desk. It has a handgrip and could be that one drawer which contains miscellaneous bits and pieces.

With no front or back, and no hinges but overlaps for openings, the boxes can be placed anywhere and the skin can be pulled aside like curtains to open on multiple sides. After withdrawing your hand, the skin shoots back into its flat shape and closes the box up automatically, to keep hidden what’s inside. Some of the latex is made into panels and some latex parts are stretched across multiple frame parts to form different compositions of overlapping skin. Inside, the frame hardly touches the latex, so the boxes keep their fuzzy shade.

Concept

Results

Cloud Box Large

Cloud Box Medium #1 

Cloud Box Medium #2 

Cloud Box Small #1 

Cloud Box Small #2 

Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters

info@mkgk.nl

mkgk.nl

maartenkolk-guuskusters.tumblr.com

Klokgebouw 131

5617 AB Eindhoven

The Netherlands

mk +31 641 811 326

gk +31 642 105 027

As the Jij’s collective from Ghent (Jij’s is an acronym of initials of architects vylder vinck taillieu, complemented by Serge Vandenhove) the team scales down to product level. As a design collective they can act on their ideas for designs that arise in their architectural practice. Their ODE PDB design for PROOFFLab is a modular cabinet which references industrial constructions in its steel cross-supports and uprights, while quotes of high design are expressed in an optional choice of materials.

Characteristic of the architecture office, architects vylder vinck taillieu, is that their interventions restructure what’s already there, so that it becomes narrative. Intuitive visualizations of a context form the basis for new ways to deal with spaces. By keeping the design open to change, the inhabitants and users of a space are made participants in the design process. They perform a balancing act between an idea, its construction, context and how space can be defined, or maybe even deformed.
This practice is integrated in the objects they develop as the jij’s. copying and using what already exists, rough materials as finished – is a big part of a dvvt and jij’s designs. If a certain, already existing, system or material fits their aim, they won’t hesitate to insert it into their design pieces.

The ODE PDB design cites a cabinet by renowned Belgian furniture maker Pieter de Bruyne, ‘Day and Night’. This piece of furniture combines material with referential properties and plays on architecture, memories, geometry, light and structure. Other references are the shelving installations of Maarten Van Severen and Ray and Charles Eames, who’s modernist ambition was to make design accessible for the masses.

ODE PDB juxtaposes the best of the designs it refers to. In a way, high and low design, modern pioneering designs and heavy-duty shelving are set side by side to highlight the strengths of both. The industrial design is revealed as far more democratizing than the expensive Eames icons. On the other hand, standardized furniture systems lack the democracy of individual choice. Purchasers of the ODE PDB can stay within their personal standards and choose the materials of their liking and budget. In its new context, the prefabricated wall system can take on a variety of configurations fitting to any intervention of space, view and sound. In the end, costumers purchase a blue print, the architect’s drawing hours, the cabinet maker’s hours and materials, which they can select from a catalogue.

a dvvt and Jij’s

With Jij’s, architects vylder vinck taillieu have drawn objects and furniture outside their practice more than once. But for architects vylder vinck taillieu this is no different than their in their own practice. Unless Serge Vandenhove completes the group with ‘s: Jij’s is nothing less than the – first letters of – first names which, in the practice name, surnames are preceded by the word architects.

In 2011, the first exercises are presented. Several exercises were arranged in series. Series of tables. Series of cabinets. Sometimes a thought apart. Such as a small table and thoughts on porcelain.

Some exercises were no less than a real assignment. Other exercises saw their start because tones announced themselves. And some, long slumbering thoughts saw their first opportunity.

Each exercise; each series arrived at its own outcome. There it was. But perhaps moreover, each exercise and each series is the ultimate mental exercise.

TIXIT

A sequence of cabinets was an exercise that had long been waiting. The architects vylder vinck taillieu practice has made use of industrial metal shelving of the brand TIXIT since long. As furniture. Even once as an actual bearer. At some point, a research is conducted into adjusting the standard elements of which the frame is made. A shelf becomes a worktable.

Adjusting elements. Or even inventing new elements or parts. This becomes the predominant thought. The thoughts remain thoughts. Until 2011. To continue the thought practice and to be able to show the first outcome, a number of prototypes is set in motion.

The prototypes don’t differ in function or size. Or not at random. That would certainly be unwanted. In the architects vylder vinck taillieu practice context is leitmotif. Developing an object or piece of furniture, it seems to lack every context as first. Odd.

By way of exercise, reference is taken as a beginning. In the architects vylder vinck taillieu practice context is leitmotif, but reference is just as well.

The prototypes of the TIXIT series – the cabinets -; examples become a guideline. The cabinet with sliding doors in the colors of Maarten Van Severen. The cabinet by Ray and Charles Eames.

This idea of ​​examples is taken as a second leitmotif, in addition to merely examining how adjustments can make the industrial frame completely different. It’s a second leitmotif that doesn’t interfere with the first leitmotif – technical exploration –  with any need for concept or design. Focus on detail, detail that should match the example. Detail that, in further developing, can support itself enough to increases the chances on making a completely new system. A system that will fit perfectly into that recognized flexibility TIXIT has been for decades.

Contemplating on how existing systems – call it context – can be valued differently -. The aim is that Jij’s has something to do with the architects vylder vinck taillieu.

It is only occasional that the Jij’s operate. That architects vylder vinck taillieu becomes Jij’s. With Serge.

The TIXIT version MVS and EAM are Jij’s reflection on Maarten Van Severen and Ray and Charles Eames and simultaneously on TIXIT.

PROOFFlab.

The issue at hand isn’t very straightforward. Definitely not average. But what seems odd at first sight, may get unexpected results that might even be more likely than the ‘odd’ would suggest.

A cabinet and acoustics.

The technology of light weight walls and partitioners belongs to the modern principles of office building. Flexibility, but also optimal separation – acoustics -, light weight walls make this technically feasible.

The technology consists of parts. Plates, lines, fittings. These can all divide in the right way. Absorb in the right way. Separating and absorbing sound. But apart from this quality, it’s a wonderful world of parts and elements that inspires architects vylder vinck taillieu.

Jij’s wants to disassembe and reassemble the standard assembly into a completely unexpected unity. A cabinet. Again the leitmotif to use the context as a starting point, but simultaneously manipulate it. And again the second leitmotiv serves as a reference, to repose with and enjoy the pleasures of technique.

Pieter De Bruyne

Pieter De Bruyne is the reference. A cabinet of Pieter De Bruyne. The deformation, simultaneously being a composition. That’s inspiring.

Pieter De Bruyne has been a fascination for a very long time. His idiosyncratic position in the landscape of Flemish architecture, not only because of the person Pieter De Bruyne itself; rather because of the connection that the work of Pieter De Bruyne makes with the international trends, and again: in his own way. Critical, but inspiring.

GYPROC

GYPROC here, is the TIXIT. GYPROC here, is the brand that precedes all others. As TIXIT does as well.

Acoustics. And the cabinet. PROOFlab and a dvvt / Jij’s

It is not a partition wall. Not in the way it was meant by GYPROC.

It is a partition wall. A cabinet anyway. As Prooff probably probably meant here by posing this question. An object that changes acoustics. An object that changes the room. Each object does that. This object does it with the space itself: the folds of the wall open.

SALONE DI MOBILE 2013 MILAN

architects vylder vinck taillieu – read: Jij’s – show the cabinet PDB for PROOFFlab.

It is a cabinet, but it’s also acoustics. The GYPROC light weight wall system is deployed into a seemingly modular system. Pieter De Bruyne draws the system, his thoughts.

At least, Jij’s perception of them.

March 2013.

In this exploration of the office, we speculated on the workspace in relation to the reduction, the presence or absence of sound and other stimuli. How does everything around work correlate with sound, what factors are at play? How can you affect these and tune standard office design formats to benefit workers?

Our earlier survey of keywords, the ‘Dictionary of Acoustics’, made it possible to map how people and things influence the passage of sound. In a series of theoretical situations, we brought the various constituents of work and silence together in one single scenario. This gave us insight into the mode of interaction between objects and means, space and location, and program and method. In relation to perception, these dynamics strongly impact the way people experience work and how they function. And as offices changed over time, so did their dynamics and character. The drone of typewriters is replaced with softer clicks on keyboards and many phone conversations are turned into silent e-mails. Can the office turn into a silence industry? With the upcoming service industry in western economies, it’s important to design work environments as calm places for total concentration.

Example mode of interaction for the silence industry:

Objects and means: ‘What if surfaces in the office are soft to our senses?’

If the floor, the ceiling, cabinets, chairs, tables, cups and even the computer and keyboard are covered with felt, everything you feel, see and hear is muffled, which creates a calming constant.

Space and location: ‘What if a space amplifies noise so much, that your own echo’s command you to temper your voice?’

If acoustics is treated as a determinant of human behavior, it could add to a sense of place and direction, signage and zoning, and mark out codes of conduct. People automatically lower their voices in big cathedrals, when they’re confronted with the acoustics.

Program and method: ‘What if light and dark divisions create designated zones to heighten the senses at set times?’

If one single work device is isolated, it’s easier to concentrate on one task. You can focus only of the computer screen, in fact all you see is the lit screen while the rest is black and blind. Rather alike reading a book or doing embroidery after dark, in the pre-electricity era.

The Dictionary of Acoustics lists words in the semantic field of the word sound. It’s a growing lexicon in which we add anything relating to sound or the sense of hearing, especially words that link to objects or space. It serves as reference book and catalog of links filed in alphabetical order with definitions and sometimes images.

Many designs by Studio Makkink & Bey turn out as a collage of ideas and forms that are carefully pieced together to deliver a coherent result. After an inventory of resources and needs in terms of people, materials, tools, and processes, ties are made between these real world conditions and our designer’s insights and imagination. One of the resources we consult for input to frame new concepts, is this database. The mode of construction in applied arts is very much like constructing language and building coherent sentences. To transfer content, in case of design: meaningful forms, you need a broad vocabulary of the determinants of form. These are the constituent words of a sentence, in this metaphor, of a design. Syntax provides coherent organization to give meaning to a design. It orders information about hierarchy, value, characteristics, time, place, origins, motive and other additives that influence design constituents.
In a basic ‘subject – verb – object’ diagram, ‘acoustics – to muffle – armchair’ represents the #001 PROOFF Earchair that insulates sound with its big, soft ears.

Because of the alphabetical accumulation of words, there’s less bias toward the value or meaning of a word, which allows insignificant terms equal access to lexicon and the design process. Aside from a reference body of words, the Dictionary of Acoustics also becomes a driver of experimental ideas.

The first of a series of PROOFFLab at Home specials is ‘Work At Home’, a mobile work dormer. PROOFFLab’s spatial investigations into the correlation between the home and the office leads to hybrid typologies that combine both. It’s a rooftop dormer in which assembled functions either apply to working or living. Each special from the PROOFFLab at Home series departs from a specific function segment of an archetypical house. In this case an extended roof and window; a dormer, is the basis for a hybrid work unit. It’s an extra compartment which can be added to the roof of a house, similar to the installment of a regular dormer. Inside, it has a desk, shelving and even a small heater and chimney, and a large window overlooking the vicinity around the house. When you sit high up at your roof desk, you can sway your feet in the bottomless space that stands out from the facade. In this workspace, the independent worker with headquarters at home, has lots of light and a great vista in front of him. The light and space generate a sense of freedom. Not being able to touch the ground with your feet, if only for a minute, can make you feel like a child. This very short instance can still produce a, very brief, carefree moment.

The spatial functions of work are concentrated inside the movable work bubble with some domestic functions added for comfort. Work At Home is an extra limb to a domestic, or other building. Proportions that stay well within official building codes. In fact, the dimensions of the components of the PROOFFLab at Home series are based on official residential setback requirements.

Flexible workers usually work from home, but imagine an colossal empty building along the highway as an indoor office square. The only thing you need to add is your private office. What if vacant buildings everywhere develop growths on their skin when flexible workers catch a work virus and start to set up office with their dormers? The dormer interior is private, this is the worker’s home, but the vast amount of square meters behind it offers publicly shared office equipment. Some office tools are used only ever so often and can be shared easily. Because of its modular construction it can be extended with a private entrance, or another spatial function the owner would rather not share. Or in case of cell combinations, you click units into place like Lego bricks. Work At Home is much like a mobile home that you can transport on a trailer with a car, only, its functional purpose isn’t leisure, but work.

When it comes to product development Studio Makkink & Bey takes on a multifaceted approach. Our designs are the product of a modification process within a context that is constantly redefined itself. PROOFFLab at Home operates as an active development model to anticipate transformations of the work landscape. On this platform we extend parts of a house to accommodate both working and living. PROOFFLab at Home is a sum of these prototype parts.

Of course, research into the spatial organization of work is not only meaningful to the design discipline. It latches onto a broader social movement that calls to revise the socio-economic system. Work and production processes, interdisciplinary networks, the labor market, engagement in urban development, use of information, social and education systems have changed and need spatial updates. On a personal level, the experience of work has completely changed compared to ten or even five years ago.

When working became much more nomadic, because of mobile work tools, the housing of work opened up to a new potential of temporary, moving and adjustable spaces. People started to work during walks and in cars, in parks and outside office hours. These added environments have shifted many boundaries, but in a rather fundamental way it has changed the working – living divide. Domesticity now enters the work space and vise versa. On the road has now become one of our new office spaces.

Our response to these transformations is a spatial composite of architectures that we prepared to withstand big changes. This corresponds to the open source movement sweeping across the globe. The democratizing effect of easy access to building plans and a say in decision-making, more exchange and on demand delivery of materials, integrates engaged ownership into the process. The fact that we have to live within our means and avoid needless manufacturing, necessitates an approach for organizing material and production.

The PROOFFLab at Home modules are presented as a prototype in blue polystyrene foam at various design events. Potential buyers purchase the work hours spent on manufacturing and on the design, the materials and finishes they pick from a catalog and the distribution to their home in a sort of on order architecture. While the unit is delivered at your doorstep, the only intervention needed is making a small opening in the house to insert the unit. When plans change again, the module can be detached and sold or stored. Each round of the PROOFFLab design cycle, we develop a new home – work hybrid. These are extensions of a standard part of an archetypical house. Every hybrid module has its origins in the house and have departed e.g. the roof, the entrance or a wall.

When the series reaches its end, all components amount to one house as a sum of parts. They’re held together by a frame of ribs that follow the contours of a house. With each exhibition of PROOFFLab at Home, the house has grown an extra body part until PROOFFLab at Home is complete. The exhibition space around is a yard with products in it that are curated to fit the theme of the exhibit. It is an active showroom where people can sit and work.

VOORSCHRIFTEN

Stedenbouwkundige voorschriften

1. Het bij het hoofdgebouw behorend achtererfgebied mag als gevolg van de bijbehorende bouwwerk voor niet meer dan 50 % worden bebouwd.

2. Indien er sprake is van een uitbreiding op de begane grond dient ‘Het werken aan huis’ een minimale afstand te behouden van 1 meter ten opzichte van het hoofdgebouw en alle overige bebouwing. Dit om licht, lucht en toegankelijkheid.

3. Wanneer er sprake is van optoppen op huidige bebouwing, wordt toegang verschaft via een extern geplaatste trapstructuur of is de opbouw voorzien van een interne trapoplossing.

4. Het gebouwde heeft een goothoogte van 3 meter en een nokhoogte van 4,5 meter.

5. Het gebouwde is licht gefundeerd.

Bouwkundige voorschriften

1. Van alle wanden is 50 % licht doorlatend, waarvan opnieuw 50 % volledig transparante vlakken is. Deze laatsten moeten over de mogelijkheid beschikken om te kunnen verduisteren.

2. Indirect zonlicht heeft voorkeur op direct zonlicht, transparante glasvlakken bij voorkeur noordgeörienteerd.

3. Het gebouwde is uitsluitend voorzien van één kijkrichting, één focus naar buiten toe.

4. ‘Het werken aan huis’ is voorzien van vloerverwarming en een eigen kleine cv installatie hiertoe.

5. Bij het gebouwde moet ieder onderdeel bij schade, vernieuwing of uitbreiding vervangbaar zijn.

6. Voor ieder onderdeel moet een uiterlijke variant beschikbaar zijn.

7. Van de gebruikte oppervlakte materialen in het interieur is 30 % akoestisch dempend, hierbij meegerekend constructieve

oppervlaktes en bekleding.

8. Het werken aan huis dient voorzien zijn van voldoende natuurlijke ventilatie.

9. Het kleur licht staat in direct verband met de akoestische kwaliteit van de ruimte, deze heeft als norm, zacht.

Interieur- en productvoorschriften

1. Elk oppervlak hard materiaal heeft bij een product een navenant gelijkaardig oppervlak aan zacht materiaal.

2. Een meubel dient ook over een ruimtelijke organiserende kwaliteit te beschikken.

3. Meubels binnen een radius van 1,5 meter tot een lawaai producerend apparaat moeten dit geluid akoestisch kunnen

neutraliseren.

4. Ieder bouwwerk voor ‘werken aan huis’ is voorzien van één nest ruimte tot afzondering en confrontatie, een werkruimte met

uitzicht en een plaats tot ontvangst van klanten, kast of archiefruimte en kitchenette.

BESTEMMINGSTOETS

Wordt het bouwwerk bij een woning of bij een ander gebouw gebouwd?

X Woning

0 Ander gebouw

Gaat het om werkzaamheden in, aan, op of bij een monument?

0 Ja X Nee

Blijft het aantal woningen gelijk?

X 0 0

Heeft het

X 0

Ja

Nee, er komen woningen bij

Nee, er worden woningen samengevoegd

bouwwerk een dak?

Ja Nee

Komt het bouwwerk op de grond te staan?

X Ja

X Nee (op toppen)

Komt het bouwwerk op hetzelfde perceel te staan als de woning?

X Ja

0 Nee

Gaat u bouwen op een erf?

X Ja

0 Nee

Gaat u bouwen in het achtererfgebied?

X Ja

0 Nee (voorzijde van de woning)

Het achterfgebied begint 1 meter achter de voorgevel van het hoofdgebouw (functioneel het belangrijkste gebouw). Als er ook een woning aanwezig is dan kan ook de woning maatgevend zijn. Het gebouw dat het dichtst bij het openbaar toegankelijk gebied (de openbare weg) ligt is maatgevend. Erf dat naast de woning ligt en direct aan het openbaar toegankelijk gebied grenst is geen achtererfgebied. Openbaar toegankelijk gebied is onder andere: wegen, pleinen, parken, plantsoenen, openbaar water en dergelijke. Fiets- en voetpaden die niet worden gebruikt voor doorgaand verkeer, vallen niet onder het openbaar toegankelijk gebied.

Is het achtererf na het bouwen voor meer dan de helft bebouwd met bouwwerken?

0 Ja X Nee

Hoeveel meter vanaf het oorspronkelijk hoofdgebouw of de oorspronkelijke woning gaat u bouwen?

0 Tussen 0 meter en niet meer dan 2,5 meter 0 Vanaf 2,5 meter en verder

X Vanaf 0 meter tot meer dan 2,5 meter

Hoe hoog is het bouwwerk?

0 3 meter of lager

X Meer dan 3 tot maximaal 4 meter 0 Meer dan 4 tot maximaal 5 meter 0 Hoger dan 5 meter

Gaat u ten behoeve van het bouwwerk ook een uitrit aanleggen?

0 Ja X Nee

BOUWWERK

By: Studio Makkink & Bey
This line drawing of a Polderscape maps out a typical Dutch polder: a gridded topography that closely resembles its real-life rendition. Our studio’s projects, products, small pavilions, furniture and public space projects are fit inside this diagram. Each piece has its own plot of virtual land and together they form a library. The virtual database provides a basis for new concepts for social design, new strategies and well-tailored products. In each design, Studio Makkink & Bey tries to connect elements of different scales and from different origin to create new utopias. The Polderscape was made for Sotheby’s New York, to benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House.

On wall-sized illustrations of ‘The Rampless City’, massive cranes build modular skyscrapers and are themselves incorporated into buildings. Crawling at their foot are beetle-like cars that represent personal spaces in this plan. Imagine a fleet of moving rooms, places in which you can sit, sleep, keep your belongings, that can be used to transport you to a park or a church. If all corners of a defined area were within reach to every passerby in it, how would that transform the character of an urban place? How much extra time would you want to spend there? Where would the centre of public activity be, and what would it look like? Studio Makkink & Bey attempts to make projects that connect the publicly shared recollection of a place with more progressive infrastructures: e.g. bustling trading activities at a street market, or the calm of a new public space in a town’s center. In many studio proposals, spaces are created within spaces, or new structures within existing infrastructures which can rearrange things substantially. By stringing parts of a context together, the studio sets the agenda for more linkage in an existing (social) structure. Diversity is kept intact and used as a collection of opportunities. In ‘The Rampless City’, every component of a business district is incorporated in an imagined, new organization. Horizontal and vertical movements, rooftops, office chairs, construction activities, the timetable of what takes place in a business district and who enters these type of places, everything is considered useful as a component of urban planning. The window-cleaner can reach places no one get to, why not let him transport messages or packages? After adding stories to high-risers, a crane can hoist something valuable or fragile up in the air at night, so it’s isolated from the rest of the world. If pavements are rampless, it becomes possible for workers to ride around in their office chairs while working.

Utrecht Manifest NO. 4: A Working Landscape
Utrecht Manifest is a biennial for social design held in the Dutch city of Utrecht. On May 2012 it opened under the title A Working Landscape under artistic direction of Jurgen Bey and co-curated by Studio Makkink & Bey, Ester van de Wiel, Sophie Krier and Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters. The biennial for social design is is a ‘design-research project in progress’ focusing on a specific district in Utrecht with the aim to bring design processes and users closer together. The disciplines of design and architecture are in the heart of the biennial to play a guiding role in the programming of the event.

Utrecht Manifest was inserted into a neighborhood to investigate the main theme of A Working Landscape through four main projects that were headed by the co-curators. The central theme for the 4th edition of Utrecht Manifest was the potential of ‘the work landscape’ as a development model for our inner cities. In many urban areas, including the chosen area in Utrecht, industry vanishes from the urban fabric to make space for a new apartment buildings. Simultaneously, our employment market and the nature of our work, changes dramatically. These shifts have profound effects on the social structures within our communities.

But how does a city develop a framework which anticipates this new environment? How do we create an urban landscape; a landscape which is alive, knowledgeable and productive? A Working Landscape operated as an active development model in which curators programmed exhibitions, debates, a help desk, workshops and field projects to We explored the industriousness of the Rotsoord district along four lines: The EDIBLE Landscape, The NETWORKED Landscape, HELP DESK Rotsoord and The BROADER Landscape.

A taste of Rotsoord’s potential for food production was explored in Edible Landscape, by Ester van de Wiel. The Networked Landscape, by Sophie Krier, examined cross-pollinations of knowledge and skills. Clever and innovative ways of production were exhibited by Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters in the exhibition Helpdesk Rotsoord in the headquarters and workspace of A Working Landscape. Visit the virtual tour to get an impression of Utrecht Manifest, from Rotsoord beer and pesto, parades, lectures, car blessings and Drive- thru-debates, collaborations between designers, local experts, residents and businesses.

utrechtmanifest.nl/virtualtour.html

The Droog+ store is gallery, store and pioneer house all rolled into one. For its interior, the studio produced an imaginary house composed of handcrafted modules in blue expanded polystyrene foam as a blueprint or model house to start a new city. The modules can be bought separately and demonstrate their usefulness as tailor-made products in their new homes. In short runs, they can then be translated into more durable materials. Just as the earliest pioneers went to America to roll back frontiers in search of a new world, so the foam pioneer house is a blueprint for a new domestic environment.

Links
droog.com/new-york