We Like This Too: October 2010

More Dutch Design Week

Lloyd Hotel foyer

Piet Hein Eek Collectie

Joost Wever Design

Eefiene Bolhuis

Iris Van Herpen at Dutch Design Awards

Else Schenkeveld

Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion

Check out the amazingly cool avant-garde Japanese fashion exhibition at Barbican Art Gallery. Kyoto Costume Institutes' Akiko Fukai has beautifully curated this space with other-wordly fashion creations, including designers such as Yohji Yahamoto and Junya Watanabe! The short feature film of Yohji Yahamoto and Comme de garcons' Rei Kawakubo is a must see!

The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei

Yesterday we took a trip to the Tate Modern, where the vast space of the Turbine Hall has been taken over by hundreds of millions hand-crafted, hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds. 'What you see is not what you see, and what you see is not what it means' says Ai Weiwei of his representation of indivuality that left us with the urge to touch just a few of the millions of precious porcelain particles! we highly recommend a trip down there - the exhibition is on until 2 May 2011, and it's free admission too!

Piet Hein Eek Collectie at Dutch Design Week

We were lucky enough to bag a flying visit to Eindhoven this weekend for a taste of Dutch Design Week. The highlights were many, but the standout by far was this beautiful old factory space, left by Philips, which has been transformed into a facory/showroom/exhibition space/shop by Piet Hein Eek, one of our favourite furniture designer/makers. The place was crammed with all sorts of oddments, from Piets own work (including reclaimed wood cabinets, chandeliers made from cheap frosted glass lampshades, and simple turquoise china in bulk) to shrink wrapped soldiers, Tokyo Bikes, and even a surgery themed installation from AF Vanderhorst.

Highly recommended for anyone visiting this lovely part of the world. Nagging in the background of course is how this and many other spaces in the town became available - talk to any cab driver and they'll tell stories about the various members of their family, usually stretching back generations, who used to work for Philips. Nice to see some signs of new life taking hold.