Why we design

Our big question is: How can we connect people, nature, and technology to design a life-friendly environment? Of course there is not just one simple answer to this complex enterprise, so we break it down into smaller questions. Over time we want to gather a plentitude of answers that allow us to see the bigger picture.

How does form come to life?

Designers have been analysing nature to extract the rules that lie underneath its masterful creations. We want to go beyond rules and data to understand what makes a product come to life.

Can we design new food habits?

What we eat, how and with whom is a matter of habit. How can we play with these habits to define our relation…

How do we measure biological time?

We look at the relationship between mechanical or digital Clock-time and the biological time of living organisms. Whenever we design something we also design the time of those who get in touch with our products, communication or services.

How can we design with organic materials?

The industrial materials of our everyday life demonstrate our distant relation with nature. We explore organic materials in eleven Design experiments and discover the unusual in the usual.

What are the values of beauty?

Whatever we make — houses, chairs, dinner — we express our values with our sense of beauty. What we consider as beautiful shows how we think about the world and ourselves. What sense of beauty, what “look” expresses our love for nature?

How can we (re)connect with nature?

When we look at nature we see what we know. Where biologists marvel at the “biodiversity of a habitat” economists might see “agricultural production land”. As naive amateurs walking off the beaten track we want to discover our own perception of nature. What do we find extraordinary in our ordinary natural environment?

What can we learn through our bodies?

We replace physical objects with software and experience distant or completely virtual realities through digital devices. Yet we are biological beings and experience the world physically. How do you design our biological interface with the world?