Every year, Dutch Design Awards (DDA) celebrates the best of Dutch design. This year during Dutch Design Week (DDW) we will announce a new DDA winner on DDW TV every afternoon for eight days. The second category is Design Research! And the winner is… Matilde Boelhouwer with her project Insectology: Food For Buzz.
Insectology: Food for Buzz | Matilde Boelhouwer
To maintain our insect population and to stimulate new populations, we must make urban environments flourish. But how can you provide insects with food in places where nothing can grow? How do you help them to find food and how can you tell them that they can eat something they are not used to? Insectology: Food for Buzz tries to answer these questions. Together with scientists, Matilde Boelhouwer researches the behaviour, the health and the growth of insect populations and has developed a series of ever-flowering artificial flowers for the ‘the big 5 populators’. She designed these so that they can function as emergency food provision and bridge the gap to areas with real flowers.
— With Insectology: Food for Buzz, Matilde Boelhouwer presents a modest perspective. Not the designer, but the insects are in the spotlight here; in question, research and implementation - the jury.
Jury statement
Insectology: Food for Buzz highlights a significant topic and shows how Design Research can give it a boost. Through concrete product development – with a great deal of poetic and aesthetic quality – a wider awareness is achieved, that has a positive impact on urban ecology. The jury commends the design approach that demonstrates different perspectives, through the well thought out details of the flowers, through the collaboration with science and through the continuous character of the research. Perspectives that bear witness to loving modesty. Not the designer, but the insects are in the spotlight here; in question, research and implementation.
Design Research
This category is about scenarios and concepts based on thorough research. From speculative to applied, from research to design and from ideas to solutions, with an emphasis on the research phase.
Committee: Angelique Spaninks, Tanja Koning, Daniëlle Arets, Jop Japenga, Eric Klarenbeek.
The other nominees in this category were Reframing Studio with their project Redesigning Psychiatry and Xandra Van Der Eijk with her project Retreat.
DDA20 on DDW TV
For eight days, we will announce the winner of each category every afternoon at 16:00h during ‘DDA Award Show Live’ on DDW TV. These afternoons are hosted by none other than Isolde Hallensleben and give us the opportunity to take a closer look at the three nominees per category. From 17 to 24 October you can watch the DDA Award Show Live at 16:00 on ddw.nl.