Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK)

KABK Class of 26: New Perspectives on Design

The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) presents four graduates from its master’s programmes INSIDE (Interior Architecture) and Industrial Design at *Class of 26 + the Avenue of Fresh Perspectives* during Dutch Design Week. Riekje Paruschke, Stella Kechagioglou, Pien Bruins Slot and Linnis van Kampen bring distinct perspectives on design and everyday life.

Their projects explore ecological material cycles, social connections within institutions, and the relationship between industrial tools and craft. Through research, experimentation and critical making, they question established conventions and explore new ways of shaping the objects, spaces and relationships that surround us.

Rerooting Forward: Designing for Death Beyond Fast Furniture, Riekje Marie Paruschke

A flat-packed table arrives as a discrete object, its lively origins compressed into standardized materials. Behind this apparent simplicity lie monoculture forests, intensive extraction, global transportation, and synthetic binders. Rerooting Forward reimagines furniture as part of ecological cycles rather than as a static commodity.

The project presents fully biodegradable furniture grown from locally sourced forest residues and fungal mycelium. Leaves, branches, and wood chips collected in collaboration with municipal maintenance services and landscape companies of The Hague are grown with mycelium into new material bodies, creating furniture that can return to soil at the end of its life.

What does decay mean within a culture shaped by industrial production, standardisation, and the pursuit of permanence and control? Furniture functions as a lens through which we might reroot our connection to more-than-human agencies and ecological cycles, where a table is understood not as a fixed commodity but as a temporary moment within ongoing processes of growth, extraction, decay, and regeneration.

riekje-paruschke.com / riekje.paruschke@outlook.de / +4916098482240

WithIn the Spray Gun, Linnis Van Kampen

WithIn the Spray Gun is a material study centered around the spray gun as a craft tool. The spray gun is usually understood as an industrial tool, designed for efficiency, repetition and control. In this project, I use it to explore a more sensitive relationship with ceramic glaze.

Through experiments with pressure, distance, movement, layering and stencils, I investigate how small changes influence the surface and lead to different material responses. The resulting tiles are not simply finished outcomes, but traces of testing, adjustment and discovery.

The project questions the separation between craft and industry. Rather than rejecting industrial techniques, WithIn the Spray Gun explores how an industrial tool can become part of a contemporary craft practice. I use the term ‘neo-craft’ to describe this approach: a practice that embraces contemporary and industrial tools not only to make something, but also as a way of understanding and learning from material.