Collective RE-source shows designing research

RE-source, the winner of the Dutch Design Award 2019, will be presenting an interactive installation about flows of residual urban materials during Dutch Design Week.

With design research, RE-source maps out flows of residual urban materials, to then utilize them as a source for circular thinking, doing and learning. RE-source will present the results of a two-year research project during Dutch Design Week 2019 in which a group of designers investigated new ways of dealing with urban waste.

RE-source presents this research on the Campina site in Eindhoven. The designers are at work in the exhibition installation. As a visitor you are invited to get to work with them to experience for yourself what it is like to redirect the flows of urban residual materials towards circularity. RE-source can also be found in the Veemgebouw as part of the Dutch Design Awards exhibition.

The circular city
RE-source researches the residual flows of concrete, sludge, grass, street furniture and plants. The project reveals systems, locations, products and materials that are required for a circular city, and it designs strategies for transforming flows of urban residual materials into a source that can continually be drawn from. Through analysing the city of Rotterdam and the underlying municipal system, RE-source attempts to gain insights into the methods, management and maintenance of the outside spaces and related flows of materials. RE-source investigates which phases are distinguished, which routes are in use and which people and non-human actors – such as places, committed citizens and professionals, tools, vehicles and rules – all play a role here.

Adopting circular thinking and doing it for yourself
During the exhibition the project team will enter a dialogue with the public about questions such as: What could the circular city of the future look like? What is required to achieve this? Which roles can designers play here? When do the different approaches conflict? How can those involved learn to understand each other?

Design Research Award 2019 Winner
According to the Dutch Design Awards jury the project RE-source is an extremely successful example of design research. It is for this reason that it won the Design Research Award 2019.

The jury: “RE-source is a collaboration at the highest level. The project has a richness that does justice to the complexity of the topic of circularity (…). RE-source has given a complicated theme an attractive playfulness.”

The RE-source team
RE-source is a collaboration between Design Academy Eindhoven / Lectorate Places and Traces, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam / Design Cultures, Studio Ester van de Wiel and the municipality of Rotterdam.

In RE-source five designers have each researched a residual material. Jos Klarenbeek investigated concrete street paving, Thom Bindels sludge, Simone Post grass, Paul Slot street furniture and Manon van Hoeckel plant materials. Their methods were supervised, observed and analysed throughout the duration of the project by the core team: David Hamers (professor in Places & Traces DAE; project leader RE-source), Ester van de Wiel (design researcher Places & Traces DAE, private partner), Joost Adriaanse (embedded researcher VU) and Ginette Verstraete (research supervision and reflection VU).

Times and locations
Exhibition RE-source, Campina site Kanaaldijk-Zuid, Hugo van der Goeslaan Eindhoven.

Outside area open from 10:00 – 17:00 hours, designers at work from 11:00 – 16:00 hours, public presentations by designers from 15:00 – 16:00 daily (except for 21, 22 and 27 Oct).

Dutch Design Awards 2019 exhibition: 2nd and 3rd floor of the Veemgebouw, Torenallee 36 Eindhoven. Opening hours: 11:00 – 18:00 hours.