This year, Dutch Design Awards (DDA) works with ten former winners or nominees in the Young Designers category. Each of them highlights one young designer and promising name in the current design field working on the same mission as themselves.
Fides Lapidaire
Young designer spotlighted by Frank Kolkman
Dutch Design Awards 2024
Fides Lapidaire is a designer who offers unexpected perspectives on complex social issues. With a touch of humour, she creates experiences that tackle issues usually reserved for policy. By making subjects tangible, accessible, and negotiable, her work reveals the absurdity of situations we often take for granted. From closing the nutrient loop with her Broodje Poep (‘Shit Sandwiches’) to examining our food system through an ‘erotic carrot experience,’ Fides explores unexpected angles that expose new questions. Her work sheds light on what we think we know, making participation in change more tangible and creating an environment of awareness and connection.
In her project ‘BroodjePoep’, Fides asks the uncomfortable question of “how your shit can feed the world”. The project re-evaluates human urine and faeces as a resource for the soil, relieving the sewage to promote a reciprocal relationship with the land, for example by fertilising land. What began as her graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven has grown into a national movement. The documentary ‘Holy Shit’ delves deeper into closing the largest gap in the food cycle. She zooms in on topics ranging from taboos to laws and regulations, aiming a shift from being a consumer to becoming a participant in the food cycle, both as a producer and provider in a nutrient exchange. In ‘Bodies of Water,’ Fides makes water quality in the Netherlands—the worst in Europe—relatable through swimwear that visualises water quality indicators. This responsive pattern changes to reflect water quality, highlighting the need for change to obtain a healthy ecosystem. Wearing the interactive bathing suit connects people physically to this issue, which tends to remain abstract and often bureaucratic. Fides makes issues as these relatable and highlights the underlying need for change.
Frank Kolkman
Young Designer Dutch Design Awards 2017
Frank Kolkman is a critical designer, researcher, and educator who merges science and design in a provocative way of thinking. Interested in the implications of current and near-future technologies, his designs offer relevant possible solutions for the healthcare sector and involve patients in their own processes. His body of work consists of confrontational prototypes, interactive installations and scenarios that create disruption and aim to make groundbreaking concepts more accessible. Kolkman reflects on extremely urgent matters and the processes and systems that hide behind them, whether socio-economical, ethical or aesthetic. His strong research and innovation methods have the capacity to either advance a solution, or challenge and highlight an issue.
Frank’s work is experimental, deconstructivist and systematic. Since graduating from the Royal College of Arts in Design Interactions (MA), he’s demonstrated his capacity to work with different disciplines and cultures. This shows in his projects, like Open Surgery (a do-it-yourself surgery robot), Designs for Flies (a kit allowing patients to develop medicines for rare illness themselves), Black Gold (for the preservation of endangered species of animals) and Outrospectre (about dealing with the experience of death with the help of technology). With Swarovski, Frank presented Crystal Dream Machine, combining neuroscience, robotics, and the refractive properties of crystals to induce deep relaxation and ‘artificial dreaming’. As an interface towards smarter ways to relax, it bridges the possibilities of smart living and its influence on our mental health for the better. He explored healthcare futures for Philips Experience Design, where he researched contemporary themes like technology access and ownership, on which he created practical implementations.
Dutch Design Awards
Dutch Design Awards (DDA) has been a leader in interpreting Dutch design for years. DDA’s goal is broader than rewarding the best design: we want the conversation about Dutch design to continue. With great openness and curiosity, we therefore facilitate exchanges between designers and curators, public and professionals. In order to continue emphasising the essential impact of design on society and to contribute to the development of the profession.
Portrait photo Fides Lapidaire: Oscar Vink
