Ineke Hans, Frugal & Fun

President of the jury and guest of honour

Over the years that I work in design I touched on it in many different ways. I graduated with an MA in furniture Design from the RCA in London in 1995, but as for many of my generation – and as for many young designers nowadays – the access to companies and clients was not there f rom the beginning. I started as a self - initiating designer, presenting my work at scruffy places during design events in London and Milan and ended up selling and producing the furniture and products that I had shown with my own workshop, still produced and sold via the studio today. Showing that self - initiated work did result in access to industry and design labels though, so after a number of years I worked more and more on commissions on local and international levels. This always varied from mass - produced industrial work, machine - made, digital produced, handmade and craft related products, to working on furniture for contract and domestic markets as on interiors, exhibitions, public space or community projects for organisations and institutions. For me, each project is a journey on its own, with its own questions: What are the topic and the context to deal with and what are the questions to answer? What are the puzzles to solve? Materials and technologies are often the starting point, or a word, or a particular story or history and often also human behaviour. This always leads to different solutions. Sometimes pragmatic and functional, sometimes more free and open for interpretations, but I always try to connect to something that we recognise in our behaviour or way of living. For a long time I thought that my variety was odd, or perhaps even wrong, that I was too much ‘a jack of all trades’ and that I should focus. From 2010 till 2013 I was involved in a project in the north of Canada on Fogo Island: working with the local men and women on furniture, produced by them, for the Fogo Island Inn. Working with men who used to be fishermen and build boats, and working with the women of the island that came together on Tuesday nights to quilt, crochet, knit, and exchange news and island gossip, turned out much more satisfying to me than just working on furniture and products that often seemed to end up in catalogues and presentations, instead of being sold. The impact of my work for Fogo Island was so much clearer and rewarding, and it made me think a lot of the system, strategies and structures that the field of design has been tangled up in. In 2015, I went back to London to start up the London Salons. In conversations on furniture related topics in East London studio’s up to the V&A Museum, involving designers, manufacturers, journalists, retailers, curators and other stakeholders in design I explored: ‘The Future of Furniture design & the Changing position of the designer’ and ended up with the pamphlet ‘EXPLORE & ACT’. Our world rapidly changes and with it the position of the designer. But how to work in a world of abundance that screams for less products, less new, less more? What do you create as a designer in this world that screams for making sense, new strategies and different positions? For me, the position of the designer is more and more that of a hybrid who works in many different contexts. Working in each context has specific social impacts on global or local levels, and to realize products, projects and solutions that are clever, these have to connect to all kinds of realities. To operate successfully, knowledge of the context that you work in is needed with an understanding of the strategies, politics and history that are part of it. For me, design can be fun, but a designer is not a decorator and no longer only involved in the design, but critical and actively engaged in design processes and strategies to design products and projects with impact. Being a jack of all trades turns out to be a very fruit ful position in this. Being a designer and producer myself and having seen the struggles of craft and industrial companies, retailers, communities, galleries, and users over the years, allow me to combine different realities to solve complex holistic puzzles and implement new design strategies. This is what I like most of all today. At Design Parade Hyères 2022, I show small settings of works in the ‘piscine’ that came about in the different stages of my career. They are accompanied by the frugal films, animations that show a part of my work that is not always visible in the final results : efficient materials use. In the ‘squash’ REX is presented. As in the frugal films, the aspect of reducing plays a role here as well. It is not only about the design of a chair, but also about the world behind it, the strategies to reduce waste and material, and to optimise re-use of valuable resources. REX is the first Dutch deposit chair. A process and communication was set up that I was heavily involved in as a designer. Frugal & fun. And that is what I like most of all today.