De-design method

• De-sign, presentation in Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 2018.
• De-design demos, Mu Artspace, Eindhoven, autumn 2019.

The Red-Blue Chair by Gerrit Rietveld – designed a hundred years ago – is considered a textbook example of pure abstraction in form and colour. Noud Sleumer took the plunge and tackled this icon from design history with his de-design method. Step by step, he removed one of the seventeen components of the Red-Blue Chair. In this way, not only a new form but also a new function was created each time. The lesson of this approach: removing components creates a playground for creativity every time. Where Gerrit Rietveld saw the Red-Blue Chair as the end point of his way of thinking, with this de-design method, that chair is the starting point of the design process.

Under the title The Object Is Absent, an exhibition was on display in MU Artspace in Eindhoven in 2019 that was a manifesto for less materialistic design. During Dutch Design Week 2019, Noud Sleumer provided demonstrations of his de-design approach. He showed that deconstruction not only has material implications, but also philosophical layers. Why is this made this way, why from these materials? How do we use this, and for what? Can’t it be done differently, better, simpler?