Dutch Design week and 10 days around the Netherlands

I’ve recently returned from 10 amazing days in the Netherlands with my dear friend Cathy.

Dutch Design week in Eindhoven is what brought us there. This was an incredible way to experience the Netherlands and their culture. We spent about 4 -5 full days at DDW,  visiting studios, galleries, exhibits, riding bikes, taking in great live music, testing out local beers and all around having the best time. There was so much inspiration at every turn. We were fighting jet lag but didn’t feel the least bit tired because of all the art, design and interesting concepts around us.

After DDW we spent a couple days in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and one day in The Hague. We saw a lot of rainbows,   the county side from the trains, incredibly old and very new architecture, visited museums in every city,  basically we didn’t sit very much-we were on the go the whole time, it’s such a beautiful and inspiring country.

A few images from Amsterdam. We had amazing weather when we were there, short dramatic storms then calm beautiful blue skies. We walked around a lot and visited the Rijksmuseum which was fantastic.  

one of my favorite paintings by Hendrick Avercamp

the Rijksmuseum library, this museum is fantastic!

Rotterdam was really interesting, most of the city was destroyed in WW11 so they rebuilt with thoughtful and interested architecture. So many interesting design features everywhere we looked. We visited the Boijmans and the Kunsthal museums, I especially loved the Boijmans museum, they had a fantastic collections of everything from medieval to contemporary art, with sweet little alcoves to walk through each gallery.  I really enjoyed Tal R’s work, such interesting use of colour and shapes, as well as Kees Timmer’s interesting animals  (there was so much more I loved but I have to be succinct here!)

 

Tal R

Kees Timmer

Eindhoven and Dutch Design week.  This really should be a separate long blog post. DDW far exceeded my expectations.  The experience has changed how I will travel in the future,  I will seek out events such as this one. DDW encapsulated  everything from sustainability concepts (the vessels below are made from algae- which is designed to replace plastic! (CAN we please replace plastic already!) art, design, robots, research… the picture below the vessels in from Atelier nl. Their story is incredible and actually the seed to getting us on this trip in the first place.  (Cathy’s interesting story)