Our History
During the twenty years of his directorship, Smeets is to play a crucial pioneering role in making the then unfamiliar discipline of industrial design part of the Dutch educational system and in garnering broad acceptance for this branch of education (Hedwig Saam, House of Concepts, 2008). Smeets is quoted as saying the ultimate goal is to ‘help satisfy the need for effective, well-formed and inexpensive products for daily use, while also promoting export by making products that are easy to sell.’ Hereby, functionality and affordability were key criteria. After a couple years of successful teaching, in 1955, the first nine students graduate.
Good contacts with the business community have always been important to the school. Smeets convinced employees of leading companies to join the teaching staff, and businesses also provided students with assignments to tackle in the classroom. Changes to the curriculum reflected changes in industry and the employment needs of companies. Industrial designers were expected to be competent in areas that are technical, aesthetic, social and cultural in nature.
As the 1960s progressed, students began to demand a greater say in the running of the school. That resulted in conflicts with the school management. Strikes and sit-ins occurred, and discontentment swelled. In the 1970s, students complain of a lack of vision, arguing that what they were learning no longer corresponded to practical experience. In 1983, a former AIVE student Jan Lucassen was appointed (creative) director.
Jan Lucassen faced with major changes within the field of industrial design and with government intervention that would have far-reaching consequences for design education. With Lucassen, however, the academy once again acquired a director who had the same decisiveness and urge to innovate as his illustrious predecessor R. Smeets. Under his reign ('83 -'99) he is able to totally renew the curriculum, place the academy ‘on the map’ internationally and solve the housing problems permanently.
Moreover, Lucassen immediately identified the splits in which the industrial design profession threatened to develop at that time. On the one hand, the industrial era with a massive demand for products, on the other hand, the need generated by the IT era for individual and more specific products that have to be realized through flexible production. Due to the emergence of more and more product solutions, according to Lucassen, the need for the industrial designer became ever greater. This analysis led to a radical change of course. Not the product, but the need of the human being becomes the starting point for the new educational plan that Lucassen introduced. The educational plan was co-developed by designers / teachers Ulf Moritz and Joke van der Heijden. The Textile Design and Product Presentation courses made room for eight departments with the focus on ‘people’. With this new classification of education, Lucassen was the first and only one in design education that connects the user (the human person) and his area of interest. (Necrelogie Jan Lucassen, 2017). Jan Lucassen renewed the curriculum into eight departments: Man and Identity, Man and Living, Man and Food, Man and Work, Man and Information, Man and Transport, Man and Environment, and Man and Leisure.
In 1999 Jan Lucassen said goodbye and handed over the baton to former Design Academy Eindhoven teacher, Lidewij Edelkoort. Only one year later, in 1999, she changed the name of the academy to Design Academy Eindhoven because she wanted its location Eindhoven to be part of its name (Job Meihuizen, 2017). Li Edelkoort’s appointment as director of the Design Academy Eindhoven signalled the school’s intention to make its mark internationally. The academy began to hold presentations at many international design events. Work by students began to be promoted around the world, and graduates became synonymous with Dutch Design. Links between the academy and international brands flourished. The annual Graduation Show also returned to Eindhoven, becoming a main attraction of Dutch Design Week.
Photo thanks to Edward Aghina (Aive alum)
The annual Graduation Show
Jan Lucassen wanted to bring the graduation work of the students to the forefront of the business people, design community and media. Therefore, Lucassen was looking for a place where the graduation show would receive sufficient attention. The choice fell on Amsterdam. In 1991, the first Graduation Show of the academy took place in the Beurs van Berlage. Ten years later in 2001, the Graduation Show moved, as Lucassen had anticipated, back to Eindhoven.
Former Creative Director Lidewij Edelkoort decided to return the annual Graduation Show to ‘De Witte Dame’ (Necrelogie Jan Lucassen, 2017). The aim of this relocation was to meliorate the profile of the academy in its own location and thereby contribute to the positively developing design climate in the city (Job Meihuizen, 2017)
The relocation from the Graduation Show laid the foundation for the current, well-visited Dutch Design Week. However, in 1998 the Vormgeversoverleg (a designers collaborative) already organized the first Day of Design with the objective to introduce entrepreneurs to designers. The Day of Design became the Week of Design in 2002 and ultimately in 2005 it was renamed Dutch Design Week (DDW).
The initial fear that the relocation of the graduation show from Amsterdam to Eindhoven would have consequences for the number of visitors turned out to be unfounded: The number of visitors of the ‘Graduation Show’ in Eindhoven was the same as that of the year before (Necrologie Jan Lucassen, 2017). Additionally, it turned out that the number of visitors skyrocketed the next 16 years. The floors of deWitteDame are not perfectly equipped to accommodate the number of visitors, leading to regular congestions.
Next to the increase of visitors, the number of graduates also increased. During its first Graduation Show in the Beurs van Berlage many students presented their work. After two editions the Graduation Show moved to De Witte Dame again.
Therefore, following 17 successful years within the walls of the deWitteDame school building on Emmasingel, the 2018 edition of the annual Graduation Show during Dutch Design Week moved to the former Campina milk factory near the Kanaaldijk-Zuid, Eindhoven. As well as being a building of great historical significance, the former Campina milk factory is a substantially larger venue, and is more suited to hosting this increased volume of visitors. The Graduation Show expanded from a 5000 m2 to 10.000 m2, so there will be much more room for the Graduation Projects and visitors at the same time. The first year at Campina 185 graduates showed 208 projects. Last year, in 2019 there were 176 graduates and the immense amount of almost 53.000 visitors.
References
• Design Academy Eindhoven, (2017). Necrelogie Jan Lucassen
• J. Meihuizen, (2017). Icare, Design research & Projects. Not published yet.
• Esche, C., Van Kesteren, A., Ossewold, J., Staal, G., & Zoete, E. (2017). Beyond Generations. Eindhoven, Nederland: Design Academy Eindhoven.
• Schouwenberg, L., Staal, G., Saam, H., Goedegebuure, M., Van Hinte, E., & Van Tilborg, R. (2008). House Of Concepts Design Academy Eindhoven. Amsterdam, Nederland: Frame Publishers