Farming Future Foundations

Growing

Welcome to our Living Lab — where materials are grown, explored and reinvented. Third-year Product Design students at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam collaborate with Het Nieuwe Instituut and Nieuw Zwanenburg to explore how what grows on and around the farm can inspire new ways of designing and making. We investigate the country side around Rotterdam, to grow a sense of future design foundations. This year, students work with three plant-based materials: Miscanthus giganteus, flax and Paulownia. Miscanthus produces abundant biomass and fibre; flax is a versatile fibre source; and Paulownia is a fast-growing tree whose off-cuts can become valuable material rather than waste.

Making

The students do not begin with a product, but with the material. They harvest, process, shape, combine and test, exploring what each material can do and how its characteristics can inspire new forms. The results are experiments, prototypes and propositions rather than finished solutions. Another group of students make recipes for nearby futures. Can we design from what grows, rather than from what we want to produce? When materials are seen as part of living systems rather than anonymous resources, a different design practice emerges — connecting agriculture, landscape, material and production.

Connecting

Farming Future Foundations is about more than new materials. It is about new relationships: between farmer and designer, field and workshop, growth and production, material and form. At WdKA Product Design, ECO, SOCIAL and TECHNO guide our practice: exploring living systems, local contexts and bio-based technologies. These are possible futures in the making: raw, curious and unfinished. Perhaps the future of design is already growing all around us.
With support from Nieuw Zwanenburg, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Orange Elephants, WdKA and our crowdfunding sponsors.