New product: Glass lantern by Richard Hutten

glass lantern richard hutten

We are proud to announce a new product: the glass lantern by Richard Hutten. 
In the project The New Original (2013) Droog investigated the copy culture in Shenzen, China. Droog wanted to advocate copying as a source of creativity. One of the participants in this project was Dutch designer Richard Hutten. He copied the traditional Chinese lantern but he used glass instead of paper and he modernized the design by reshaping the lantern. The lantern is available now!

Download the press release here

Droog wins Milano Design Award for Best Tech

In Milan this year, Droog presented their smallest exhibition ever – and rode away with a Milano Design Award for the Construct Me! Hardware Collection.

Droog wins Milano Design Award for Best Tech
The Construct Me! Hardware Collection by Studio Droog, presented in Milan 2015, has won Best Tech for the 5th Edition Milano Design Awards 2015. Droog was among only 15 nominees for the award and picked from the 440 presentations shown during the Salone del Mobile 2015. The results were revealed Sunday 19th April, 2015 at Teatro Franco Parenti, Milan.

The jury stated that the work was commended for the originality in the choice to work on the “micro” dimension, which becomes added value without the need for spectacular effects. The project discreetly shows simple technology infused into design, through experimental and innovative products, highly technical, yet poetic.

Droog was among winners such as Lexus, Gamfratesi/Danish Art Foundation and Antonio Marris/Segno Italiano.

About the Award
Reaching it’s 5th edition, the Milano Design Award is the first and unique award dedicated to the best set-ups of Milan Design Week – part of Design Week Festival and organized by Elita in partnership with La Repubblica, IED, Future Concept Lab, Casa Matera, fuorisalone.it and lovli.it.

Related video’s
Learn how to screw me with this video on Droog’s collection of hardware.
Renny Ramakers interviewed for Construct Me! hardware collection. See this video.

Hôtel Droog presents during Inside Design

September 27th – 29th

DROOG GALLERY
MERCI pop up store

September 20th – October 6th
Merci, the Paris design concept store, will pop-up at Hôtel Droog with a snapshot of the Merci experience. The authors of the book Brushes, Daniel Rozensztroch and Shiri Slavin, and Merci art director and home stylist, will show their collection of brushes for the first time in Amsterdam, after Paris, Montreal and Tokyo. The collection reveals the know-how that ties different countries together, along with the immense creativity of those who conceived and fabricated them: the workers, artisans, inventors and designers. Brushes relate a history of social roles and the evolution of our way of life in terms of beauty, hygiene and well-being.

Brushes by Lina-Marie Köppen (Studio Droog)
Lina-Marie Köppen graduated from the Social Design Masters program of the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2012 with a collection of products based on brushes. Droog challenged her to take this project to a next level. She will show a small collection of sideboards

ROOMSERVICE
RIJKSSTUDIO LECTURE by Rachel Harding (Studio Droog)
Friday, September 27th
5 – 6pm, followed by drinks till 8pm.
Rachel Harding will talk about our recent project commissioned by Rijksmuseum. Studio Droog created designs based on Rijksstudio, a collection of over 125,000 digitized images of the rich collection of the Rijksmuseum. Century old works reinterpreted in contemporary shapes, techniques and materials. Please visit the website and get inspired
www.rijksmuseum.nl/rijksstudio

BUURTTAFEL by Beeldenbouwers
Hotel Droog will feature BUURTAFEL by Beeldenbouwers, a table made of waste wood covered with chalkboard paint so you can write your table top conversations and thoughts right on the table.
www.beeldenbouwers.nl

KABINET
Fashion store Kabinet will feature the Paper Vase Cover of designer Pepe Heykoop and the The P…… Collection ’13 of Dutch Fashion designer, Wenda Harmsen. The Paper Vase Cover is a skin to cover any empty bottle and to turn it into a vase. It is adjustable in size by rolling up the paper and the triangular structure allows the paper to set around the bottle so it can be easily shaped to taste.  With het The P…… Collection ’13, Wenda Hermse wanted to explore the world of a painter. She translated the contrast of the strict field of a canvas and the freedom of a painter’s brush into a collection with conservative elements.
www.pepeheykoop.nl/
www.wendaharmsen.nl/

WELTEVREE
Weltevree will introduce their new range of outdoor products for the first time. In addition, Tatjana Quax of Studio Attenzione will do a daily reading with behind-the-scene insights of her inspiring blog. www.studioaandacht.nl/
Readings Tatjana Quax:
Friday, September 27th 4 – 5pm
Saturday, September 28th  3 – 4pm
Sunday, September 29th 3 – 4pm

About Inside Design Amsterdam
www.elle.nl/insidedesign

Centraal Museum Utrecht acquires 3 iconic Droog designs

Centraal Museum Utrecht acquired the Speaking Coffee machine by Eibert Draisma, Paraffin table by Timo Breumelhof and the Godogan table by Niels van Eijk & Miriam van de Lubbe from the Droog collection, to be included as part of their contemporary design collection. The Centraal Museum is known for its extremely varied and widely known collection of design.

Since the founding of Droog in 1993, the museum has collected design objects from the Droog collection almost every year. The Droog pieces are of great value to the museum collection. As the curator of applied arts and design Ida van Zijl explains: “In the first 10 years of the 21st century we experienced a typical trend in design, in which designers manufactured products that sat on the border between art and design. Droog is a very good example of a design company who created products that blurred the line between art and design”. The museum boasts an extensive collection of works by Droog, ranging from design classics such as the Chest of Drawers by Tejo Remy (1991), the Tree-trunk Bench by Jurgen Bey (1999), and the Bone Chair by Joris Laarman (2006), in addition they have also acquired the complete 14 piece Saved by Droog collection from the 2009 Droog Milan presentation. In 2010 they edited the artist’s proof #1 edition of the Red blue Lego chair to their collection. This piece was exhibited at Rietveld’s Universe, as part of the Rietveld Year organized from October 2010 until January 2011.

The recently collected pieces will be on display at the ‘Nieuwe Aanwinstenzaal’ at The Centraal Museum Utrecht (date to be confirmed).

Speaking coffee maker by designer Eibert Draisma (1990)
This coffeemaker is assembled from rejected material. It includes the base of an old transformer. The coffee maker is programmed to repeat a series of pre-recorded messages, designed to alert the owner when the coffee is ready.

Godogan table by Niels van Eijk & Miriam van de Lubbe (2006)
The Godogan table has been (hand)made in Indonesia because of the region’s high quality craftsmanship. The woodworkers were challenged to the utmost with this extremely complicated design depicting an Indonesian fairy tale. This table could not have been carved in the West, where comparable craftsmanship no longer exists.

Photographer: Gerard van Hees

Paraffin table by designer Timo Breumelhof (2000)
Many products are designed for extreme ease of use or for safety. Extremely “responsible” products leave little space to the imagination or creative (mis)use, they lose their poetry. From this point of view the designer created an ‘unsafe’ table, this table’s lack of safety considerations increases its poetical aspect; ‘using’ the table will destroy it.

Photographer: Marsel Loermans

Droog for Rent: try before you buy

In the historical centre of Gent Droog and Sofie Lachaert have launched Droog for Rent. Upstairs from the Sofie Lachaert Gallery, Droog re-designed a studio and a flat for 2 in which you can find a “restaurant”, “lobby”, “gym” and a “library” all fully equipped with Droog products. Droog for Rent offers you a unique opportunity to try and buy not only brand new products but it also gives you the chance to experience Droog’s top design pieces – icons of the 21st Century – as long as you wish for.

http://www.droogforrent.com

For the press release click here

press release: Fantastical Investments



Fantastical Investments—the outcome of Droog Lab’s study of consumption habits in Russia—is an imaginary luxury brand. By Droog with Metahaven, Fantastical Investments will be presented on Thursday, September 22nd with a panel discussion and exhibition at Droog Amsterdam. Unveiling a collection of nine products, the brand will act as a vehicle for discussion on the co-existence of fiction and survival in a new vision on luxury.

“Russians have a deeply engrained reading culture; one can find literary classics in any supermarket. At the same time, they are known for their lavish spending on luxury goods. Our intention was to understand the relationship between these apparent contradictions in developing a new model of consumption inspired by Russia,” says Renny Ramakers, co-founder and director of Droog, and initiator of the project. As part of the Strelka 2010 summer program, the Droog Lab design team led by Daniel van der Velden discovered that many consumption patterns in Russia emerged from a context of institutional mistrust. “Western countries have often been perceived as an example of the future towards which Russia is moving to. However, in the world of rising uncertainty and institutional instability Russia may be considered as a looking glass that for the last 20 years has been offering the Western countries the reflection of this coming future,” stated sociologist and economist Olga Kuzina in conversation with the team.

The team observed that acquiring durable goods can be a survival strategy, akin to hoarding or investing in gold, and that consuming fiction and feeding the imagination is equally critical to one’s capacity to thrive. These principles formulated the Fantastical Investments luxury brand proposition, inspired by Russia but aiming for more universal impact.

“Fantastical Investments brings together imagination, luxury and survival, anticipating a gradual dissipation of the 20th century institutional backup for civil life,” says Daniel van der Velden. The brand “thrives on some of the darkest sentiments currently around in Western culture, but gives them a positive turn.”

Download the full release here.

In the press: design for download

DETAILS featured design for download in its 10 DO-IT-YOURSELF DESIGN PROJECTS THAT ARE LESS CRAFTY, MORE COOL by Monica Khemsurov.

When Droog launches its game-changing Design for Download website in the coming months, it will do for design in the 21st century what Ikea did in the 20th—democratize it—in this case by bringing design directly to anyone with an Internet connection, with no international shipping or middlemen required. Just choose and configure your design, download the schematics, and either take them to a nearby fabricator or give it a try yourself. Among the first online offerings will be open-source decorative electrical sockets, tables and chairs made with wood and 3-D printable brackets, and shelves whose composition can be customized using Droog’s new software.

Read More

Domus featured design for download in its design report by Valentina Croci:

Droog continues to explore programmatic design issues. The group’s focus has always extended beyond the trends to concentrate on processes, production chains and user applications since it was founded in 1993 by Gijs Bakker and Renny Ramakers. Always conscious of social and market signs and changes, Droog has been analysing goods production methods.

Read more.

One of our favourite quotes

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas

It’s two days before the opening of Droog Las Vegas–a great moment to pull up one of our favourite quotes by John Unwin, CEO of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas as published by Travel + Leisure:

John Unwin has been giving me a hard-hat tour of the Cosmopolitan for the better part of an hour, pointing out the “casino cabanas” and the lobby columns patterned in high-definition video screens. But it’s not until we reach the building’s eastern edge, where it opens onto the sidewalk of the Las Vegas Strip, that I realize just how different it’s going to be. “We’re going to put a Droog in this corner,” the hotel’s CEO tells me. A what? “You know: Droog, the Dutch design store. Slots would make more money, but I think Droog is cooler.”

Read the full article here.

Interview with Daniel van der Velden and Agata Jaworska

Russia consumes

Last week the Russia consumes design team, led by Daniel van der Velden was in Moscow for research and initial concept development. Theory & Practice published an interview by Ksenia Petrova with Daniel and Droog project & content manager, Agata Jaworska today. Here is the extended English version.

Tell us, please, what is this project about and what was its premises?

Agata: The Droog Lab was initiated in 2009 in Amsterdam by Renny Ramakers, director and co-founder of Droog, mainly for two reasons. One is this fact that more and more cities all over the world are developing in the same direction and are starting to look the same, when in reality, one knows there are real differences between them. The other is, if you look at the world of design, designers are copying and referencing each other and the design world is becoming circular and inward-looking. The Lab was started to bring designers to foreign places to find new directions for design. We will be working on eight projects over the course of four years.

Daniel: The initial idea of ‘Russia Consumes’ came from two observations that Renny Ramakers had. One was about the extreme, ‘hyperconsumption’ – diamonds, ‘bling-bling’, etcetera. The other was about peasants reading classic literature on the train. We think that these two forms of consuming might be connected – either by their extreme difference, or by the fact that they exist as part of a similar mindset or mentality. So, what we’ve been doing here this week is visiting different places, interviewing people, researching, observing and of course participating as far as we can in everyday Moscow life – and observing that through a design lens, a design point of view. What we have found is going to be translated into a design concept which can be an idea, an image, a prototype or a product. The concept will not be about Moscow but it will be informed by it.

Agata, you said, that there is a series of similar projects by Droog?

Agata: The first project was in Dubai, the second is in the Canadian Arctic, the third one is in New York, and Moscow is the fourth. There will be four more and each of them will have an exhibition and a publication.

What is the role of Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design?

Agata: Strelka is our local partner. We certainly couldn’t have entered Russian society the way we did without them. Also the president of Strelka, Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper came to Amsterdam for our kick-off brainstorm with Daniel, Renny Ramakers, Sjeng Scheijen, an expert in Russian culture. We will be presenting the outcome at Strelka in May 2011.

What kind of outcome you are expecting from this project?

Daniel: I’m expecting that we deliver something that works on two levels; one is a level of fantasy, of fiction, or fairytale – design providing an escape route for the mind. But on the other, lower level it should be about absolutely basic elements of life, about survival in a world that is so pretty and yet so hostile. At this point I also would like to mention our team, consisting of the architect Totan Kuzambaev, graphic designer Pavel Milyakov, graphic designer Michèle Champagne and product designer Digna Kosse. Together with Agata we’ve had such a great week – and I do hope this will show off in the final result. As said before, it is going to be something conceptual as you would maybe expect from Droog.

Agata: It’s very important to note that we’re not designing for the place, even though we are working with people from here, but rather, we are learning from the place as an inspiration for a broader result.

What did you learn so far here, in Russia?

Daniel: The thing that I found very interesting about Russia as far as I’ve seen it is this vibrant and dynamic society, which coexists with institutions and government in a fascinating manner. Because there often seems to be no positive interaction at all – the government does its own things, people do their own things. You have this body of institutions that is almost like a ruin, or museum piece, and on top of that there is all that social energy. We’ve been to luxury villages and exclusive spas and shopping malls, and to a soup-kitchen. We’ve been to people’s houses, to the high-rise in the periphery, and to grey and black markets where they sold things from Chinese imports to machetes to live owls and raccoons. Impressive.

Agata: I think the biggest lesson we learned from Russia is how it is incredibly advanced in some ways but also backwards at the same time. The way people cope, and at times thrive, is a model that countries in the West dealing with uncertain times can learn from.

And the last question is about Russian soul, of course. There are lots of speculations about this ‘mystical’ thing. Do you have something to say about it based on your experience of Russia?

Daniel: You can keep talking about it, you may approach it – but you can never quite grasp it. I found here, in Russia, a deep and sometimes black humor. No conversation has passed without at least five jokes and anecdotes. This coexistence of optimism and cynicism is very interesting and it does have the literary quality that Renny pointed at in the very beginning of this project. I would say that we don’t see this in the West and I wouldn’t say I understand it yet – I’m not sure if I ever can. I’m thankful for this week, and invite you to look at the outcomes in May 2011.

Vidafine interviews Renny Ramakers

Text by Vidafine.

“Reality isn’t static anymore. It’s not a set of ideas you either have to fight or resign yourself to. It’s made up, in part, of ideas that are expected to grow as you grow, and as we all grow, century after century.” – Robert M. Pirsig, Zen: The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,1974 , as referenced by Renny Ramakers, Co-founder and Director of Droog.

Recently, we introduced you to Droog, a conceptual design company located in Amsterdam. We mentioned the various facets of the company and how the Droog Lab is quickly becoming a globally known research hub that brings relevant solutions to its clients, and people of the world. Many of us live life hoping to one day start something that we can call our own. Few, actually go ahead and do it. After learning about Droog, I was particularly interested in the projects that this company is currently involved in, and was estatic when Co-founder and Director of Droog, Renny Ramakers, agreed to chat with us about her beginnings and her vision for the future of Droog.

idafine: After some research, we discovered that you have a history background. How did you transition into global design from what you studied in school? What drew you to this particular industry?

Renny: After studying art history I reached a point in which I wanted to impact it. Art history gave me broad perspective and critical rigour that I combined with my ability to sense what is going on at the present. Together with the Co-founder of Droog, Gijs Bakker, we noticed a movement that some designers in the Netherlands were pioneering. We gave it a title and a presence that took off, and eventually became global.

Vidafine: Knowing about the past and how things ‘used to be’ definitely can drive someone to initiate change for the future. What is your ultimate goal for Droog?

Renny: I am quite ambitious and we have many plans… I started Droog because I found it necessary to present a new spirit in design. At that time this new spirit was based on a conceptual approach. Now, one can see this approach everywhere and as I feel it, it is time for new impulses. That’s why I started the Lab. But we are also trying other directions, and are working on other models. For instance, our presentation this past April in Milan, Saved by Droog, has opened up a new way of working (by treating unwanted products as raw material for product development) and we want to continue on this path. Ultimately, I want to express that Droog is not a design collective but a company. Our company is content driven but it also wants to make profit.

Vidafine: Founding your own company is definitely a lifetime milestone. What’s your most memorable moment as Co-founder and Director of Droog? Continue reading “Vidafine interviews Renny Ramakers”

DAMN: More than Sandcastles

Here is the DAMN’s lead on the story about design in the Middle East featuring Droog al Arab:

Droog al Arab

On Design and Art in the Middle East

You don’t have to dust off any archive to see Dubai’s quick zero-hero-alleged zero turnabout. But those with business class destination-deficiency syndrome do not dictate life and art, and as Mark Twain quipped ‘reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’. Surveying the fortunes & development of the regional art and design scenes, one resident expatriate also profiles the work of ‘local’ artists Rokni & Ramin Haerizadeh and Hassan Sharif.

Jurgen Bey in local attire, climbing Fossil Rock; Droog al Arab team in the background. © Photo: Katrin Greiling