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.
Studio ThusThat
Young designer spotlighted by Tom van Soest
Dutch Design Awards 2024
Studio ThusThat primarily focuses on materials and alternative making-processes⸺particularly on the use of uncommon materials such as industrial and mining wastes⸺to suggest alternative futures. Led by Kevin Rouff and Paco Boeckelmann, they work across a range of disciplines, bridging design, art and material sciences. Studio ThusThat creates pieces rooted in a deep appreciation for materials, the maker process, and storytelling. The various disciplines allow them to unearth the complicated backstories of our everyday material world. Researching these starting points with industrial players, scientific researchers and other collaborators, Studio ThusThat recontextualizes materials in a world of finite resources, demonstrating the full potential value of waste.
Since graduating from Stanford University, University of Twente and the Imperial College and Royal College of Art London, Kevin and Paco work with unconventional materials under the name of Studio ThusThat. Their ongoing research explores industrial waste from mining and metallurgy. They focus on byproducts of different production processes, to look at potential applications and share a more complete story of what lies behind these metals. For ‘This is Copper’, they worked closely with scientists to develop a geopolymer from slag⸺a byproduct of copper refining that is fastly piling in massive black mounds worldwide. The resulting material is a high-performance cement alternative with lower carbon emission. The collection used various techniques to experiment with the material’s characteristics. Their new collection of furniture and interior items, ‘One Side Sawn’, is made from repurposing single sheets of salvaged aluminium offcuts colloquially known as ‘crusts’: the irregularly textured sides that are swan off from the massive blocks of metal cast in the early stages of aluminium production. The collection ensures that every offcut is used, acknowledging the cost and scale of refined materials.
Tom van Soest
Young Designer Dutch Design Awards 2016
Tom van Soest develops new materials from 100% construction waste. His innovative approach to sustainability and material reuse in the construction industry eliminates the need for valuable and scarce raw materials through these recipes. Tom is a pioneer in cementing how recycled construction materials can be commercially viable and implemented on a large scale. Emphasising the beauty and potential of waste streams addresses environmental challenges and redefines aesthetic possibilities in construction. The mix of different waste offers a new range of aesthetic possibilities for the built environment. Yet his work goes beyond the end product: demonstrating entrepreneurship and the passion of a true artisan through the design of the production process, too.
Tom van Soest graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2012 with his research using building waste as a new material for bricks. Blended Materials quickly led to the founding StoneCycling, a company that manufactures different bricks from building waste. Having worked with a team of specialists, ambitious brickworks, investors, architects and builders, the upcycled bricks meet all the technical requirements and certificates for use in new build projects. After ten years of StoneCycling’s success, Tom returns to his roots by re-establishing Blended Materials as a new design studio focused on waste and design. With an innovative mindset, entrepreneurial spirit, and dedication to sustainability, the studio offers project and waste-specific designs and small-scale productions from 100% local waste for those who want to challenge conventional aesthetics. Van Soest is also involved in recycling projects with glass, having collaborated with Heineken bottles and in the Bottle Up project in Zanzibar.
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.
