From 18 to 26 October, Eindhoven will host the 25 edition of Dutch Design Week. This week, Dutch Design Daily presents a number of highlights, today the symposium ‘The Future of Design Archives’ at the Van Abbemuseum.
The Louis Kalff Institute (LKI) and the Network for Design and Digital Culture Archives (NADD) organised the symposium The Future of Design Archives at the Van Abbemuseum during Dutch Design Week. Archives are living histories that embody innovation, creativity and identity. They contain the stories, ideas and tools that continue to shape design culture in the Netherlands to this day.
Robert van Rixtel spoke with Bas Pruyser, designer of the Netherlands’ most famous waste bin, about what motivated him to recently throw away a large part of his archive. Designers Ineke Hans and Floris Hovers also discussed the challenges they face in preserving years of design processes, as well as how design archives can be preserved for the future and the problems that this entails.
In addition, Timo de Rijk (director of Design Museum Den Bosch) spoke with designer Miriam van der Lubbe and Aukje Bolle (business director of Nieuwe Instituut) about the importance of heritage policy for design archives. We asked ourselves how archives contribute to the design of the future, but above all why it is sometimes difficult to properly preserve these valuable sources of information.
NADD
The NADD stands for Network Archives Design and Digital Culture, and is a growing network of museums, creators, archives, designers, researchers and collectives. By combining forces within the network, the NADD makes design and digital culture archives visible, accessible and future-proof.
Louis Kalff Institute (LKI)
The Louis Kalff Institute is the heritage centre for industrial design archives, located in Eindhoven.
Symposium The Future of Design Archives
Van Abbemuseum
Thursday 23 October, 2025
Photography: Dutch Design Daily
