Doreen Westphal | Design

From June 9 until June 13, designer Doreen Westphal will present her growing collection, ‘Concrete and Detailed’ for the first time in Germany at DMY Berlin. Two products of the ‘Concrete and Detailed’ line will be highlighted during this show at the spectacular site of the former Airport Tempelhof.

Concrete Vase

Concrete Vase exhibits all the qualities of a new generation concrete: Ceramic Concrete. The object is light, smooth and detailed. The design connects with both nature and culture, coating a straight geometrical form with an organic, ornamental texture.

The use of Ceramic Concrete also has ecological advantages. Research by Except – consultants in sustainability – has indicated that an object made from concrete uses 50 times less fossil fuels than the same object made in conventional ceramics. Using this material also reduces acidification and land use. For the complete research results, please check out this website.

In the Concrete Vase, the use of Ceramic Concrete marks a new stage within design, one in which scientists and designers work closely together to create products that are not just sustainable in appearance, but are objectively tested for their merit.

Concrete Lace 2.0

Concrete Lace exploits the unique characteristics of a locally produced material in order to create an architectural object that combines craftsmanship with modern technology and material innovation.

Applications include gauzes for hotels, auditoriums and public buildings, window treatments or room dividers for private homes, decorative interior and exterior wall coverings, visual dividers for large spaces like restaurants or parking garages or sculptural elements for urban gardens.

Doreen Westphal

“I am a designer and technician, craftsman and artist, producer and user, practitioner and theorist.” Working in the fields of conceptual crafts Westphal is mainly influenced by science, architecture and social political developments. She investigates different fields and combines types of knowledge, searching for a better way to design and produce our daily products.

Concrete Vase as presented at Salone del Mobile in Milan.

End of may you will find the new website with store locator and webshop for the whole KREJCI and DOREEN WESTPHAL collection under this address.

If you like to see how fossilizing is done please paste the link in your browser. Unfortunately it’s only in dutch.

http://www.zie.nl/video/lifestyle/Doreen-Westphal-fossileert-op-Salone-e-Mobile/m1czjvmfvbd3

The last day of Fossil-Fun. One i was looking forward to all week is the plastic board from energy producer Eneco. When i last researched them a little they where trying really hard to be the green guys without acting very green. In fact, they still sell ‘grey energy’ (fossil and nuclear power included) and there are much better companies to buy your electricity from. However, a last report published by Greenpeace shows that compared with the other big companies in Holland they are the least bad. Eneco invests a lot in campaigns about their green images, so the last gift they send to their costumers is this plastic plate. It was given to me because nobody wanted it. Why do companies again and again keep throwing cheap, unwanted and useless gifts at their so valued customers?

Something funny happened. Two young men came along and when they recognized who was in the fish tank they both started to call. At a certain moment one of them was very angry shouting in his phone and i thought to understand with my untrained Italian ears: ‘…Barbie, Silvio Berlosconi e cemento.’ Seams that it was ok, since i didn’t see them coming by again.

The fish tank is almost full containing many items this world doesn’t need and people don’t want anymore like icons of war, misuse of religion, aluminium cans an plastic bottles, Ikea plastic herbs, animal cages, politicians who run a circus instead of a country and so much more. Surrounded by uncountable presentations of new products and collections i see people floating in between becoming more and more worried about a volcano in Island and the question how they will get back to their home. I feel good about having used my days in Milan to carry out an intense search for the future. We don’t need any more new products, what we do need are new concepts for the future.

With the vulcano crowd above Europe fossilizing becomes a new dimention. It’s very strange to be in this place holding the exhibition and daily meeting people who got stuck in Milan.

Meanwhile the fish tank is filling bit by bit and i have nice and interesting conversations with the visitors. What do we have new? Well most attention went to the aluminium cans, it’s really about time somebody thinks of an alternative for them and politics takes maesures to prohibit them, they really don’t belong into this world anymore.

A guy from the Netherlands told me that he went to a lecture of Philips. Apparently Philips subdiverted their whole  production proces into seven steps, like production, packaging, transport… When they reach an improvement of 10% CO2 reduction in one of those categories they entitle themself to call the product a green product. If that is true i don’t know what to say. Well, i also have a clock from Philips for fossilization, on the clock is written: Philips – Let’s make things better.

The concrete vase i designed for Zuiver is received very well.  Also the investigation done by Except about the environmental impact comparing products made from concrete as supposed to ceramics is well understood and appreciated. Except found out that ceramic concrete products use 50 times less energy during the production process then fired ceramics. Also land use and accification are much less.

We are exhibiting in this place which was closed for almost 40 years and before that was used by a black smith. This is a picture from the staircase up to the abandoned flats above.

Some time ago a guy told Ulla that woman eat about 5kg of lipstick, during their entire life, so she decided today to fossilize her Chanel lipstick and start eating less of it.

Ernst was feeling very strongly about fossilizing something representing mcdonalds, he chose to fossilize the mcdonalds horn while giving an impressive speech, his friend fossilized a picture of the former pope. He explained that he is not against the pope himself, but against the institution church.

I still get smiling faces when visitors look into the look-box seeing the ‘visitor about to fossilize banker’.

First visitor to fossilize at our stand was Marco from Geneva who is convinced that the overkill of one way plastic bottles are something to leave behind, so he fossilized one.

In the afternoon we had many especially Italian people visiting the stand who very much enjoyed the little Barbie-Berlusconi-Milan Cathedral setting. No need to say more:

I apologize for the delay of the post, the internet here is not quite as reliable as we could hope for. The first day was very exiting, the Dutch people around me voted that the first item to be fossilized would be the giant version of the Wuppi. The Wuppi was a rage during the last football European championship in Berlin introduced by a Dutch supermarket called Albert Heijn who throw these cheap and useless items in unbelievable quantities at their costumers.

The other item that made it into the concrete was a birds cage, which I thought was appropriate after I read an article on the Netherlands being the sixth in the top ten for animal suffering worldwide (http://www.duurzaamnieuws.nl/bericht.rxml?id=57078 – unfortunately this article is in Dutch). The last item was the first Barbie.

The evening ended with a cocktail party to present the magazine Connecting the Dots which features all current Dutch presentations in Milan. During that event I was interviewed by Jeanne Tan, together with Gijs Bakker who was announced by our host as the godfather of Dutch design. I was nervous all day and this was certainly a very exiting but great moment.Gijs Bakker, Jeanne Tan, Doreen Westphal, Nora Steenhouwer. photo Ilko Kemmere

Outside the Tuttobene presentation the Smalle Haven restaurant from Eindhoven set up a nice cafe.

The transformer by studio Re-Creation at the back.

Yesterday and today we have been setting up the whole Tuttobene presentation in Milan. Old friends, like Studio Re-Creation and Marianne Kemp as well as new colleges have joint this exhibition. Fish Tank with fossil suggestions underneath

The fish tank is ready for first fossil items tomorrow, i am curious what visitors feel to fossilize first, the barbies, the guns, the birds cage or my very favorite: the latest and most perverse product of Ikea; plastic herbs. I am looking forward to have conversations about what we should leave behind and what is actually worth while taking along to the new world. There is enough beautiful but conscious work around,  like that of my neighbor Bo Reudler.

We will see, now that everything is ready we will be heading for the traditional dinner the night before the opening with Tuttobene at pizza place Fabrica.

Plastic herbs, by Ikea. For the ones: “who love nature…”

Fossilize – concretizing the everyday

by Doreen Westphal

Eindhoven, March 2010 – At this year’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile (14 to 19 April, 2010, Milan, Italy) designer Doreen Westphal will invite visitors to think about the changes we like to make to the world we live in, changes which might create a new one. What is good that we should keep? What is not worth taking along to the new world? What should we leave behind and just fossilize?

In Milan, Doreen Westphal has set up a station for distinguishing between these elements of the everyday. In the middle of the space, a large domestic fish tank will be placed. Underneath the fish tank is a basin full of objects so that visitors can either bring their own items for fossilization or can choose one there and then. The visitor climbs up some stairs to place the object (for example a doll which might represent a banker) in the fish tank. Then, together, the visitor and designer prepare the concrete using a domestic kitchen mixer and place a layer of concrete over the item. Day by day archaeological layers representing parts of our current life will be built up.

Fossilize, Westphal’s latest work in concrete, presents her chosen medium as a new base material for ceramic products, using 50 times less energy than conventional ceramics. Concrete may not look or feel green, but its sustainable potential is enormous. Covering our current reality, Fossilize creates a firm foundation for a new approach to sustainability. Westphal created several items such as Concrete Mug, Concrete Lace, Concrete Crochet Tiles and for Dutch design label Zuiver she designed Concrete Vase.

Fossilize is part of the Tuttobene Group Exhibition at Via Savona 18, Milano.

DOREEN WESTPHAL

“I am a designer and technician, craftsman and artist, producer and user. I am looking for answers, and through my work I try to make a contribution so together we can overcome the challenges of our times.” Doreen Westphal works as an autonomous designer in various disciplines, taking the original use of materials as her starting point. The result is an intriguing form of design that is rich in contrasts, with its own characteristic mix of rough and smooth elements. Westphal is fascinated by sustainability and recycling materials, which she plays around with and frees from their original function. This gives rise to usable object that are beautiful and durable at the same time, designs that are not ruled by trends and always have an air of playfulness about them.