This year's Dutch Design Week theme is R.A.W.: Rebel Authentic Worth. So there is room for the unpolished and the experimental. Meggy adds a question of her own. 'We all know the human scale. But what is the natural scale? How do you build in harmony with everything that lives around us?' That question runs through her list like a common thread.
Hallenweg 11a, D5
Teun spent two years on his first collection. Now he changes course and shows fifty new directions in his own workshop. Shapes that come from trying things out, not from drawing everything up in advance. 'Not everything has to be thought out beforehand. That's what I find so inspiring about Teun,' says Meggy.
Gielissen is supporting Teun for the third time this year. He built the stage for his work himself, from leftover wood from our stand construction. Read how that collaboration began.
Building TX, Strijp T, A11
Does the world still need new designs? Or can you remake a classic from a different material? Planq, a partner we often work with, did it with coffee grounds. Every chair in the new Bakkie collection contains the waste of fifty espressos.
Meggy will be there on Saturday 17 October, when the first chairs come out of the press. Fancy a 'bakkie', as the Dutch call a cup of coffee? Reserve your moment at Planq.
Paradijslaan 8, E31
The whole location is worth a visit. Be sure to stop by Mass, space and biomateriality, a collaboration between .unusual, Van der Laan Foundation, Heijmans and Gielissen. You literally step through the gateway to a new material reality.
Take a good look at the tiles. .unusual prints them from seaweed granulate. Some stay transparent, others are filled with mycelium that grows through the seaweed. 'For me, this is a place where we explore what is possible together with our partners,' says Meggy.
Our engineers designed the shape of the tile together with .unusual, so it fits seamlessly into the wooden structure. The aluminium profile you would normally use made way for a wooden T-profile. A small detail with a big effect: the entire structure is biobased and can be taken apart again.
The rest is poplar plywood, which is light and therefore easy to build up and reuse. As a finishing touch, the wood received a seaweed lacquer by .unusual. We are the first interior builder to test whether that lacquer also works on a large scale.
At Kazerne, Meggy also takes part in Radical Chains, the research into radically different chains for food, housing and landscape. You'll find her there on the afternoons of Monday 19 and Wednesday 21 October, together with the other participants. Talk to them about ownership and the place of nature in our buildings. Prefer a seat at the table? Book a Democratic Think Tank Dinner at Kazerne on 20, 21 or 22 October.
Ketelhuisplein greenhouse, Strijp S, B24
We usually measure buildings by hard values: energy, temperature, square metres. Heijmans turns that around with G³, the Building Happiness Score. How well does a building suit the people who use it? 'It's high time we started measuring the built environment differently,' says Meggy.
A few metres away, in the Klokgebouw, Heijmans welcomes its guests this week at a reception desk we built. That desk was not just made, it was grown. In a mould of cattail and hemp fibre, the mycelium did its work until it dried and went dormant. 'What happens when you don't make a piece of furniture, but let it grow? That question hasn't let go of me for a year.' The top is rubberwood with a second life, from our Oogsthal.
Fuutlaan 14k, F12
re*wild turns paved, unused places back into gardens full of life. In 2025, the initiative placed its first starter kit at Spoor K: a container on Fuutlaan. Step by step, a shared garden grew there, cared for by local residents and makers together. During DDW, you can taste bites made with ingredients from its own soil.
Five places, nine days. Enjoy exploring Eindhoven.
Photos: Jeroen van der Wielen, Planq, .unusual, Heijmans, Jian H.
