Wonder Why Graduation Expo

Wonder Why Graduation Expo • 30 June — 6 July 2017 • Royal Academy of Art, The Hague • Wonder Why Graduates • Allegra Santis • Anna Groet • Anna Sitnikova • Ashton Yangwook Kang • Bianca Meilof • Fabienne van Steensel • Irene Wing Sum Wu • Iris Erkelens • Jasmijn Muskens • JungMin Lee • Lieke Vernooy • Marta Sigríður Róbertsdóttir • Milou Simons • Nanneke Boomgaard • Nienke Sikkema • Noortje de Brouwer • Rick Mouwen • Tommy de Moor • Ymke Vertelman • Yuri Choi • Zsofia Kollar

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Interior Architecture
& Furniture Design Department

30 June — 6 July 2017

Royal Academy of Art Prinsessegracht 4, 2514 AN,
The Hague, The Netherlands

Wonder Why Graduation Expo

From 30 June – 6 July 2017, the graduating year of KABK’s Interior Architecture & Furniture Design (IAFD) department will have an Expo showcasing our highly anticipated graduation projects. This event will be specially designed around the theme of Wonder Why, where we want to start a dialogue between students and the audience. During this Expo week, we will enhance the experience by introducing ourselves and discussing our visions with our visitors.

Wonder: Desire or curiosity to know something
Why: The question, asking for a reason or explanation

Wonder speaks more about the research that we do in the process of our projects. Investigating possibilities, of being inspired and letting ideas run wild. Why speaks about our relation to things around us, trying to understand the reason of how things are the way they are and creating our vision by agreeing or disagreeing with a subject. By asking why, we create the ability to understand the point of view of others but also be critical.

For the exhibition itself we want to ask the visitor to wonder why. The question teases but also says that we want to involve everyone in the concepts and end results of our designs.

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Nanneke Boomgaard

Project:

Speaking in Forms

Discovering a new form of language; a language which already exists but is rarely noticed independently. It is the language, which is found in ‘packaging materials’. These forms are considered a by-product, while visually they are in fact very diverse and interesting.
I pulled apart the various forms of this language, identified the strongest characters and made their strong identity visible. Combined, these characters can reinforce each other, which can result in the creation of new forms with new potentials. I investigate these forms, characters and combinations, analyze the dialogue with the spectator and imagine various applications.

Paper:

But, What Did You Actually Do?:
A Research into the Artistic Handwriting

Last semester I used packaging materials. I’m intrigued by the rich and interesting form language of these packaging materials. To accentuate this form language, I treated them as sculptures. I used the already existing forms and coated them, which raised the question; but what did you actually do with it? This question made me think. In my opinion, the fact that I noticed these packaging materials and placed them in a new context was already enough. But is that true?
This essay is about working with existing materials, the handwriting of the designer and it also forms a research into what is needed to identify this personal artistic handwriting.

Contact:
nannekeboomgaard@gmail.com www.nannekeboomgaard.nl

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Yuri Choi

Project:

Drawing Spatiality on a Linear Timeline

Music can make one feel and experience the void. Humans not only feel the narrow range of vibration in their auditory nerves but sense an associated three-dimensional volume beyond their body. My graduation project is to draw sonic space on a linear timeline. As gene designs a physical form of an organism, I used music as a genetic map for architecture.
Musical intuition is translated into geometrical intuition, and rhythm is superimposed on physical equilibrium. In the space that music creates, one encounters different vistas every millisecond, with every step. The sensory experience when moving through the space, absorbing rhythm, material and dimensions in sequence, makes one (re)envision the music; the very space plays the very music.

Paper:

How Does the Essence of Architecture Appear?

This research explores to manifest the sequence and the consequence of the creation for a good work of architecture. The ‘Before Construction’ chapter suggests various qualifications for a capacity of an architect. The ‘During construction’ chapter explains, when internal and external forces are in equilibrium, an organism-like building can exist harmoniously with it’s own identity in a given temporal and spatial context.
The ‘After construction’ chapter deals with how the frozen matter melts into liquid vibrancy. The chemical reaction between the physical structure and various reactants is ongoing phenomenon. In the meantime, experiential and phenomenological consequence proves solid matter to become an alive organism.

Contact:

yurivery@gmail.com

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Iris Erkelens

Project:

Phantasmagoria

Pinda (peanut), dark skinned but somewhat Dutch within. Blanda, white as rice, but with Indonesian traditions. White rice needs a bit of sambal or serundeng to mix up with. The Hague is the widow of Indonesia; a Kampong; heartland of an ethnic mix; a connection to the colonialism that influenced Dutch culture – often unintentionally, as exploitation’s byproduct. The Indonesian heritage is part of the Dutch DNA but often taken for granted or unrecognized.
It is traceable in cityscape, architecture, culture and people’s lifelines and memories, popular and high culture. Everything combines into a rice table, a Dutch invention with an Indonesian content, every bite differently composed. Those who search for their roots search for facts, but in truth want a story. Move to complete the facts, envision to create the story.

Paper:

(e)motion in Space

One can move through Architecture; Architecture can move as a whole or in parts; you can be moved by Architecture both physically and emotionally. Architectural motion and emotion are related to different states of being as discussed in my paper entitled (e)motion in Space. This (e)motion is a tool for integrating the narrative in our daily built environment (architecture). It creates identity, articulates space and addresses experience as the essence of perception.

Contact:

erkelens.iris@gmail.com www.spatialmotion.nl

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Anna Groet

Project:

Hydrophobia

Force yourself to the intensity!

Hydrophobia explores the sublime using a personal fascination with the traces of time on architecture.
The dual phenomenon of the sublime (beauty and terror) is provoked and amplified by the combination of the deteriorated old electricity plant in The Hague and the vulnerability of the human body with the workings of water in its different poetic and powerful states.
The scale and the patina of the building reinforces the eight-implemented experiences of water that play with aspects of comfort and discomfort forcing the visitor to question its boundaries.

Paper:

Age of Space

The elapse of time in space.
When a building becomes older, it is exposed to a certain image of time and its identity changes. Experiencing an old abandoned building is self-confronting. We sense the sublime — both terror and delight. Terror, because the experience makes us reflect on our own process of physical deterioration. Delight, because we recognize beauty in the ruins, the old buildings and in the process of deterioration as well. We are not capable of influencing time and its effect on architecture. So, it’s a frightening beauty, a reflection of our own aging.

Contact:

annagroet@hotmail.com annagroet.wix.com/interiorarchitect

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Ashton Yangwook Kang

Project:

Maru

Maru is a place for introverted people where they can get fully immersed with their inner selves. It offers different levels of privacy within a public space.

Paper:

Heterotopia: Interiority in Modern Cities

It aims to find what the privacy is and how it works in modern cities. It researches through several contemplative architecture in order to find a system or a tool which makes people secure and private within a public space.

Contact:

yangwook.kang@gmail.com

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JungMin Lee

Project:

The Ecology of Memory:
Lost Beach Scheveningen

The ecology of memory: Lost beach Scheveningen’s narrative extends beyond the boundary of its architecture. Sprang from the sand dunes and overlooking the sea the Memory Tank proposes an unique ritual release of any particular memory.
This building itself has an imaginary background story set in 2100 that also links to the idea that total and infinitive circulation within the system of natural interaction.

Paper:

A Crack in the Wall:
Journey Towards Discovering the Way of Architecture Be Alive in the City

Looking at today’s urban development and physical cityscapes, the clear state of the urban realm is loosing ground. It has been replaced with the artificial, the result of interventions by the planners. Meanwhile the city dweller is developing a strong existential longing for a connection to Nature’s continuity and presence.
This paper explores the possibilities of the coexistence of city with nature and of a way to let architecture become alive. Venturing beyond assumption that nature can be represented by a fake display it explores an unconventional approach introducing performative terms such as Crack, Hypothetical Jar, in addition, Martin Heidegger’s fourfold. The link to a personal travel-diary further stimulates shifting your notions of nature as well as its role in architecture and the city.

Contact:

jungminlee@email.com www.m-in.in

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Rick Mouwen

Project:

The Production of a Palace

Designing a palace is representing its inhabitants. It always has been like this, it only used to be an easier as designers and architects use to know what to represent. This is no longer the case.
A consensus on how to represent the Royal Family doesn't exist and they are ambiguous on how they want to be represented. Architecture would be too slow to keep up, and too static to maintain its validity. The palace as a set for representation should be adapted to those who visit. Therefore, to design a palace you don't need an architect, but a director and production designer.
In my design for a Palace, I use a montage of cinematographic spaces and their inherited meaning to create an eclectic form of architecture which functions like a film.

Paper:

By the Means of Pop Culture:
On the Dialogue Between Film and Architecture

In my paper, I explored how Pop Culture formed our perception on how we look at architecture and interiors. It is about the way architecture and the urban landscape is represented after the architects and urban professionals are done with their work, the architecture's afterlife. It's not only about this representation but also what we can learn from it, to adopt the archetypical representations from pop culture as our own.
After an analysis of numerous films, I established an encyclopaedic volume that follows the rhetoric of filmmakers in their use of architecture. This allowed me to create an understanding of the meaning they give to architecture and sketch an option on how these principles could be used.

Contact:

rjpmouwen@gmail.com

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Marta Sigríður Róbertsdóttir

Project:

Virtual Resistance

What would happen if we had to carry our homes with us? We would have to figure out what are the most valuable things we own, and find a way to hold them all together. But it could also be that our homes are always with us, just in an compressed, digital form. With our virtual environments expanding and actual environments reducing, our own bodies could be the next thing we let go of.
In my project, I imagine a near-future scenario where subgroups have formed a resistance against this transformation. While embracing some variations of the digital self, a person’s identity also has a substantial presence. That way each part of their virtual environment is linked to a physical counterpart that travels and changes with them, creating their temporary surroundings.

Paper:

Inner Spaces

Dreaming is an important part of forming our individuality. When we step into this inner world our imagination is unrestricted, and gives a relief from the limitations of the outside. By giving examples of individuals that have succeeded in communicating their own worlds to others, I wanted to focus on the importance of their unique missions. With their eccentricities, those individuals manage to confront the rest, and make us reconsider set patterns of living and behaving.

Contact:

www.cargocollective.com/marta_sigridur messagetomarta@gmail.com

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Allegra Santis

Project:

Hazard: Magnificent City of the Best People

A political commentary in the form of a private city that lampoons championed ideals in American culture. Elements based on real, absurd and romanticized principals are realized to illustrate the surging movement of selfishness in the United States. Tourists explore the landmark buildings of Hazard: the Hunters’ Church of Justice where hunting is holy; the Mother Goose Kindergarten & Shooting range where children learn to become sharpshooters; St. Donald’s Medical Resort that is only accessible by helicopter, and the Explorium Emporium Correctional Center where you can catch a show of inmate shock treatments. Only the best will be selected for the honor of living in Hazard.

Paper:

The Mandarin Candidate

Social design has been stagnant and repetitive where the benefits to humanity have been hindered by the true motives of the designer. Hidden incentives inevitably caused unintended consequences that have harmed more than helped those in need. Motivations must change to realize a purer, more evolved form of social design, and the way to do so is by acting selfishly. This satirical paper comes in two parts; an exploration of documented cases of failures in social design and why they were unsuccessful, and, a tale about the largest philanthropic architectural firm and their new CEO Dene Mason, an unpopular, vulgar and spray-tan connoisseur from the accounting department.

Contact:

www.allegrasantis.com arcinaut@gmail.com

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Milou Simons

Project:

Reflections

Reflections gives a different and unexpected perspective on your surroundings. It explores space and its encounter with architecture in the public domain.
The Grote Kerk in The Hague sits in a small, busy square that is swallowed by tramlines and other traffic. A virtually closed wall of facades defines the contours of the square. All this frustrates a view on the rich architecture of the buildings on the square and the church. Thus, a real perspective on the building is impossible.
A system of strategically placed mirrors and seating objects unlocks the beauty of the square, the old buildings and the daily life by introducing unexpected vistas, real and unreal.

Paper:

Spaces Initiate Meetings

Architecture is ‘always’ surrounding us, twenty-four hours a day. The spaces where we live, work and that we move through provoke unconscious decisions, effecting these activities. Do you really make your own choices or is it all premeditated and designed? What makes you comfortable in a certain space? My paper researches the perception and experience of space.

Contact:

cargocollective.com/milousimons milou_simons@hotmail.com

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Anna Sitnikova

Project:

Emptyful

Space to hesitate — basic human space. We construct our spatial environment by reading it physically and cognitively. Emptyful constructs space as perceived, magnifying this phenomenon and celebrating space as an event. Space redesigns itself with each encounter and cannot be fully grasped. Therefore it is hesitant.
Hesitant as a concept embodies various possibilities, confronts with opportunities, yet stays neutral. It could be everything, but essentially it is nothing. It is inconspicuous and not about itself. People are central to this hesitant reality. It provides room for improvisation, nonchalance and makes oneself at ease with space — in control and appreciated. At its finest, hesitant space manifests itself as basic.

Paper:

Basic Manifesto

· Basic gives an overview
· Basic is everywhere,
yet remains unseen
· Basic form emphasizes its content
· Bed is a basic body space
· Beauty of our body is
revealed dressed basic
· Basic clothing is a piece of cloth
· Basic can take any form
· Open floor plan is basic
· A4 sheet of paper is basic
· Gray is basic
· Backdrop is basic
· Architecture of bare stage is basic
· Humor is a basic ‘human’
communication tool
· Body is our basic instrument
· Breath is the basic body technique
· Scroll bar is basic
· Helvetica is basic
· Readymade is the new basic
· ...

Contact:

www.annasitnikova.com annesitnikova@gmail.com

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Fabienne van Steensel

Project:

Huidhonger

The relationship between physical contact and the comfortable welfare of adults is the subject of this project. When we were kids we had our cuddle toy, which gave us the right amount of attention and a safe, comforting feeling. When we grow older, we think we don’t need this object anymore. However, we don’t realize the real importance of physical contact.
During cuddling, both with objects and persons, the brain creates the pleasurable substance oxytocin. Oxytocin is indispensable, because it fights stress and fear. If you don’t have much physical contact, ‘huidhonger’ can be experienced. This basically means the physical loneliness through lack of attention and safety. With this in mind, we can conclude that everyone has a desire towards physical contact, no matter what your age is.

Paper:

Het Onbegrijpelijke Leren Begrijpen

The key of my work took shape during my study. I learned that people could experience a sublime moment, which can have a big emotional impact on them. Normally, our mind is in a neutral position, but we also need something that arouses passion (Burke). Pain and lust play a big role in this.
In my research, I wanted to find out how people experience emotions and how they can be influenced. People first have to experience pain and fear, before they can experience happiness (lust): the sublime moment for me. Within my work, the focus lies in the awareness of pain and fear, which eventually will lead to happy feelings.

Contact:

faabvansteensel.nl fabiennevansteensel@gmail.com

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Ymke Vertelman

Project:

Space Being

Shrinking and expanding personal space. A traumatic experience in the public domain shifted Ymke Vertelman’s perception of space and time. This sparked her graduation project that addresses how perceptions of personal space can be transformed.
A symbolic base on the floor, suggesting personal territory, and extensions, attached vertically to the body, as articulation of space, are the elements used, while experimenting and testing in collaboration with two dancers. Doing so, she develops a new scripting language and provokes a new spatial perception. Scenario’s written by humans, meaning space, in stills and moving images.

Contact:

www.ymkevertelman.com ymkevertelman@gmail.com

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Irene Wing Sum Wu

Project:

Goed Gezellig Gevangen
(Good-Cozy Prison)

Impressed by Halden Prison in Norway, it shows the necessity of rehabilitation for the better prison. At the core of my project is the affirmation that prison should be a school, and awarding is more effective than punishment. There is a new system of the prison; it will not sentence how many years the inmate should stay, but like a school, you can go to the next level if you are sufficient, and then graduate which means he is ready for to the society. So rather than the prison being a dead-end for convicts, it will still give a challenge as the aim of their lives. These four stages are: ‘Security’, ‘Connection’, ‘Co-operation’ and ‘Community’. With designing the gradient of different aspects, inmates can rehabilitate mentally step by step.

Paper:

Gezelligheid:
The Dutch Feng Shui

Gezellig(heid) is a super typical word in the Netherlands. It is a cheesy typical Dutch word, but in fact we do always easily forget there must be a reason why it can become so widely used. In my paper, I investigate what it exactly is and why it became so deep-rooted as a moral concept to the Dutch. I went through the Dutch history, art and domestic culture, and I found the story line of the gezelligheid. It has a good value behind, and I believe it can be a new revolution of contemporary architecture. As well as Chinese Feng Shui, although it is just a local philosophy, all people around the world can use it as long as we find the goodness in it. Instead of bringing fortune, gezelligheid brings you well-being.

Contact:

iwwstyle.wixsite.com/iwws wwsirene@gmail.com

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Noortje de Brouwer

Project:

Haptopia

I am searching for real things. Genuine experiences triggered by ‘touchable’, physical objects. Things that provide a moment to unwind in our hectic everyday life. An act of rebellion against surroundings where tactility is banned, like universities, hospitals and offices with their flat, smooth walls, empty corridors and neutral temperatures. I create objects that infiltrate these spaces. Objects that invite to (re)discover the sense of touch. Only by interacting with the object it will reveal its characteristics.

Paper:

Een Ode aan de Tast

A research into touch, that resulted in a manifest for Haptopia.

Tast staat op nummer één.
De hiërarchie van de zintuigen.

Aanraking is communicatie.
De enig gebruikte taal.

Tasten is ontdekken.
Spelenderwijs vindt men de weg.

Oxytocine is de vervanging van drugs.
Deze zal in grote maten geproduceerd worden.

Wie zoekt naar tast, zal rust vinden.

Contact:

www.noortjedebrouwer.nl info@noortjedebrouwer.nl

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Zsofia Kollar

Project:

To become a driving force in people

We desire to create bonds. Not just with other humans, but also with objects. Our curiosity moves us to reveal secrets, find the hidden and wonder about intentions, functions or the process of an object. MacGuffin is an object or device in fiction which serves merely as a trigger for the plot. My objective is to create a series of MacGuffins that will become a driving force for people. MacGuffins can be the most ordinary objects or the most extraordinary with a mystery to discover, my exhibition is a domestic environment with strangely familiar objects. My environment shows that sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.

Paper:

Understanding the power of objects by researching real MacGuffins in our constructed reality

We create, buy, collect, use and fantasize about objects. I believe there is power in every object, a power recognized by our sub-conscience. Objects are plot devices, triggering plots, moving protagonists and starting action. In short, MacGuffins. In fiction and film, it is elementary to understand the power of the MacGuffins. How can we define MacGuffins in our reality? My research paper tries to understand how certain objects gained power. It investigates how we pursue reality and what the elements of human obsession are thus providing the possible ingredients for a real MacGuffin.

Contact:

www.zsofiakollar.com zsofia.kollar.surreal@gmail.com

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Bianca Meilof

Project:

Frame of Reference

The word looking relates to something we do. To look is something that we can still describe as objective. The act of seeing, however, focuses on the object we see and our perception of it, what makes seeing subjective.
With my project I’m researching the expression of objects and it aims at understanding the differences in perception when the nuance within the objects and its context changes. Working with the different chapters of the essay, constructing our way of understanding by –interpretation, – curating, – seeing a process, – empathy, I look at the readability of the image.
It is a project about our way of perceiving, while perceiving an image.

Paper:

Construeren van Begrip

Looking at an image we perceive it as whole and subsequently we see it as a collection of separate elements. We look at form, colour, material and context. This is what the physical image consists of. But simul-taneously we recognize, associate and interpret.
You recognize and associate elements from an image and connect them to different and the ‘same’ elements. We use these elements that we know to interpret the meaning or significance of the elements and in the end the image as a whole. What makes that we are no longer only looking at what is in front of us.
In my essay, I explored how our perception of an image changes by the information we take/or get from the image.

Contact:

www.biancameilof.nl biancameilof@gmail.com

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Tommy de Moor

Project:

Beatus

Mortality is an uncomfortable truth kept out of sight. In ‘Beatus’, I take this truth and create a shrine to time and death. I found inspiration from the film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer based on the world of fragrance. From the movie, I have used the technique of enfleurage, an ancient, expensive and slow practice of capturing the scents of delicate flowers through purified animal fat. As flowers are also a symbol of impermanence, I capture their scent of decay into pomade and, with the leaves of the flowers, use them as part of the mummification process of a piglet. The piglet is immortalized in the aroma of sanctity and has become Beatus.

Paper:

Ars Moriendi:
The Art of Dying

The Ars Moriendi are books from the Middle Ages that consoled people on how to die well using imagery and insight. They provided comfort and taught those who were dying to not fear death. In my paper, I create my own Ars Moriendi. On April 4, 2005, my grandmother died. I was unprepared in the face of death and it impacted me deeply. In trying to understand my own mortality, I manifested my thoughts into writing and drawing. It allowed me to approach my inevitable death on my own terms and make it into something beautiful instead. Now, I feel at peace because when my time comes, I know how to die.

Contact:

www.destudiovantommy.nl tommy.demoor@hotmail.com

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Jasmijn Muskens

Project:

Komt Goed

‘Komt goed’ or ‘everything will be okay’ is what we always say. We use these two words all the time to reassure people that they shouldn’t think or stress too much about things. That’s also totally true for my project, everything will work out because you can’t do anything wrong.
‘Komt goed’ consists of several loose parts you can put together in different ways to make all kinds of furniture — or whatever your heart desires. You are free to add things you have lying about the house to the parts I have designed. And, if something doesn’t fit… try the next thing. With my work I reintroduce play in our daily life and provide some stress relief.

Paper:

Echt, over hoe de realiteit niet bestaat

Our brains can trick us into thinking things are different from what they really are. How can we use this to our advantage and flee from reality?

Contact:

www.jasmijnmuskens.com jasmijnmuskens@gmail.com

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Nienke Sikkema.

Project:

Exhibitionism

Based on my paper, I designed 3 stages (in the broadest sense of the word) on which people can be exhibited or can exhibit themselves. They explore the relation between theater, illusion and reality and what it means to present yourself.

Paper:

Wisseling van werkelijkheid (Change or reality)

Some say that life is comparable to a game or theater. People constantly play roles that they adapt according to the situation they are in and the people they are with. How you play the game and what impression you make on yourself and others is essential.
Especially in the age we live in, where everything is constantly in flux and people move from link to link and click to click, a lot depends on a first impression. Symbols and rituals play a key role in all this: they connect the real world with the fictive world of the experience, illusion and fantasy. We’ve all gotten so caught up in the game that we forgot we are playing and to what rules we are unconsciously submitting.

Contact:

www.nienkesikkema.nl sikkema.nienke@gmail.com

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Lieke Vernooy

Project:

AlienNation

I often envision the potential of materials brought to life. This collection of creatures takes people into my world where everything is personified.
Where each material has its own voice and its own ‘motorics’. I show people that our surroundings do not always need to be this static as they usually are.

Paper:

I Don’t Know Why

A quest for an understanding of my mind, my perception of the world, my perception of my body. I divided myself into seven characters that together make me.
Seven characters that all stand for a different fascination inside me. I wrote down memories, dreams and poem like stories to find out what keeps my mind busy.

Contact:

liekevernooy@gmail.com