Dream Out Loud - Designing for Tomorrow's Demands

Dream Out Loud, Designing for tomorrow’s demands

designers present radical ideas for a better world

26 August 2016 – 1 January, 2017

It is a tradition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to stage a major bi-annual survey spotlighting the latest innovations within a particular art discipline. This edition of the Proposals for Municipal Acquisitions focuses on contemporary design. The museum issued an ‘open call’ for submissions, inviting artists and designers living and working in the Netherlands to submit proposals.

Around 400 designers responded, submitting a total of 750 projects. A jury selected 26 participants, whose work will be featured in the large-scale group exhibition Dream Out Loud that opens on 26 August. Director of the Stedelijk Museum, Beatrix Ruf will announce which works be purchased for the permanent collection later this autumn.

The artists and designers taking part are truly dreaming out loud, striving to create a better world as a way of retaliating against cynicism and apathy. They embrace the demands we’re facing today with a playful inventiveness.

Want to be less dependent on meat? Then devise your own meat substitute. Seek out non-oil based materials and return with a clean universe. Fight the plastic debris polluting our oceans by vacuuming it up yourself, or design a smog free zone where you can breathe fresh air. Other designers take upcycling so much to heart that they amass hordes of objects, re-envisioning them as hip fashion, crafting pieces of jewelry from old safety helmets or melting down discarded CD’s to print a chair.

Almost effortlessly, a new language of form is beginning to emerge. It’s possible, it’s happening, and it’s breeding a new generation of Dutch designers who are passionate about improving upon what already exists, rather than adding to the abundance of luxury items. Although this ‘social design’ may not always generate instantly usable applications, it fuels the desire and curiosity to explore new ways of thinking, and the freedom to imagine ways of pairing the makeable and the viable. As these designers clearly show – design can make a difference!

Participants in Dream Out Loud:
Agatha Haines
Bart Hess
Benedikt Fischer
Boyan Slat
Claire Verkoyen
Dirk van der Kooij
Elisa van Joolen
Fairphone (Bas van Abel)
Floor Nijdeken
Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin)
Helmut Smits
Hella Jongerius / KLM
Jesse Howard
Marjan van Aubel
Marleen Kaptein / NLR / LABEL/BREED
Metahaven (Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden)
Next Nature Network (Koert van Mensvoort and Hendrik-Jan Grievink)
Olivier van Herpt
Patrick Kruithof
Pavèl van Houten
Pieke Bergmans
Pieter Stoutjesdijk
Studio Drift (Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta)
Studio Roosegaarde (Daan Roosegaarde)
Studio Stallinga (Henk Stallinga)
We Make Carpets (Marcia Nolte, Stijn van der Vleuten and Bob Waardenburg)

The jury comprised of:
Bas van Beek (designer and lecturer)
Corinna Gardner (curator of contemporary product design, Victoria & Albert Museum, London)
Caroline Prisse (artist, curator and director of Van Tetterode Glass Studio)
Chris Reinewald (design journalist and former editor-in-chief of Items and Museumvisie)
Lennart Booij (curator of applied arts, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, jury chairman and curator of the exhibition).

Proposals for Municipal Art Acquisitions is organized bi-annually with the financial support of the Municipality of Amsterdam.

Note to editors:
For more information and images, please contact the Press Office of the Stedelijk Museum, +31 (0)20 573 26 660 / 656 or pressoffice@stedelijk.nl