Design of the times

Design, some say, is the Netherlands’ number one export. One comes across the Dutch signature in airport design from Beijing to Bengaluru and Abu Dhabi, in fashion design with collaborations with India and Istanbul, in product design with creations sweeping the prestigious Red Dot, and in corporate identities on logos as varied as Al Futtaim in the UAE, Amsterdam Fashion Week in its home country, and Cheil Jedang in South Korea.

Red Dot, the international design award aimed at recognising the best in design and business, calls the Netherlands ‘traditionally successful,’ with the country creating 46 products in 2011 that won the unique distinction.

A research paper by Kevin Fales, Stephanie Mcdonell and Phaedra Harder at dutchDesign, an undergraduate field school and research programme offered by the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, ties the roots of Dutch design to urbanisation on reclaimed land as early as 16th century, by a process of organising and dominating their environment. The authors call the design language “traditional functionalist”, which offers simple, modest and practical solutions, taught perfectly at some of the best design schools in the world, such as the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Creative collaborations

“It does so by stimulating collaboration, matching local demands and building sustainable networks. The focus countries have a strong design culture of their own, (mass) produce goods and develop design services,” says de Baan.

One example is the travelling exhibition, Connecting Concepts. According to DFA, “Dutch design is usually exhibited in the form of a collection of objects, often with star designers’ names attached. Connecting Concepts lays bare the processes that underlie these objects. These processes — which involve collaborations between designers and clients, the use of new and unusual technologies, and a willingness by involved parties to reinvent the wheel, sometimes literally — are what make Dutch design different and unique.”

Another example is Marcel Wanders’ famous Knotted Chair, which combines traditional craft technique with contemporary knowledge and materials.

“Matching local demands, collaborating with local designers and producers and exchanging ideas are a fundamental drive for Dutch designers,” de Baan says.

In architecture, having created some of the oldest and best-loved cities in the world, de Baan says, “we have specific knowledge about urban planning and social housing, issues that arise all over the world and where Dutch architects work together with — for instance — Chinese and Indian architects and planners.”

In China, the socially conscious Housing with a Mission, created via a Sino-Dutch collaboration, won an award at the Shenzhen biennale in 2011. In India it translated into Delhi2050, an urban planning project. According to DFA, “The Dutch being positively obsessed with planning, (it is said every square centimetre of land in The Netherlands is planned at least twice) contributed in this process to develop possible future scenarios for Delhi in 2050.”

In fashion, the collaborations between established Indian and Dutch designers such as Suneet Varma and Jan Taminiau appear on the catwalk on Wills Lifestyle Indian Fashion Week this month. “For fashion, craft and technology are a great connection through which design knowledge is not just exported, but shared both ways,” de Baan says.

Flying Dutchmen

Emphasising on the practical, the Dutch way of building an airport, says Rik Krabbendam, Managing Director, NACO, Netherlands Airport Consultants, is so unobtrusive that no one thinks of asking where it came from.

“We don’t intentionally try to bring something Dutch to our projects. Airports have to comply with international standards. At the same time we try to express the uniqueness of the location. If it’s Dutch, it is a reflection of what has allowed Schiphol become one of the prime international airports. That is functionality,” Krabbendam tells GN Focus.

The company’s worldwide projects include airports as varied as Botswana’s Sir Seretse Khama International Airport, Egypt’s Cairo International Airport and Viracopos-Campinas International Airport in Brazil, in addition to the master plan of the Abu Dhabi International Airport’s Midfield Terminal Complex and the Beijing New International Airport. The company is a part of global engineering company Royal Haskoning DHV, with a singular focus on aviation, including airports.

He says one can find futuristic airports in Europe and in Asia — Changi in Singapore, Incheon in Korea and larger airports in North West Europe in Frankfurt and in Amsterdam.

In its 63 years, NACO has seen airports evolve from “transition zones between air and ground and a border crossing to zones that integrate other modes of transport such as rail, along with being an area for shopping, hotels, business parks and cargo.”

The next few decades, says Krabbendam, will see all complicated processes being automated, “with automated baggage system, with all sorts of passenger information, which have made airports into an IT operation more than just a transfer point of passengers.”

The commonality, he says, is in following the three-P approach to airport design: “people, profit and the planet. Yes, we are architects and engineers and planners; we design for the people who use it. We consider the environment and we make sure that there is return on investment. What is Dutch about us is we do a professional job and bring in all experience.”

And of course, their projects often echo that unique Calvinistic philosophy in design.

An incorporated future

Credited with the Al Futtaim logo in the UAE, the company in the recent past has built an even larger footprint. It created a brand identity for Victor Russo, an enthusiastic young Italian entrepreneur with a passion for Italian cuisine in the Netherlands. Other projects include Powel Norway, brand strategy and design for Rekarto Moscow in Russia, brand architecture and corporate typeface for Cheil Jedang South Korea, and brand identity and activation for Br(ik Brussels in Belgium. The company now has agents across the world, including here in the UAE, where it is represented by Image Creators FZE.

“The different trends we see are: the emergence of living identities, since companies grow, contextualise and converse with their environment,” he says.

Visual design as storytelling emerges in Total Identity’s work. “It’s the relevant story and mentality that companies try to share with their environment to realise their ambitions. So it’s more than pure visual design, it’s about storytelling, service design, behaviour and mentality. The incorporated identity becomes a very social identity, akin to the use and participation in social media,” he says.

In this new world, corporate design and design elements are offered as tools, ready to use in decentralised contexts.

Total Identity was tasked with the brand development for the Amsterdam International Fashion Week. The biannual event started in 2004 with the aim of putting Amsterdam on the fashion map.

Since fashion is not merely a business, Total Identity describes the challenge as creating, “an appealing brand platform which is innovative, enterprising but also stabile, professional and binding.”