The Mindcraft Project has gathered and showcased Danish designers and makers for a global audience since 2008.
— This has been a platform where the boundaries between exploratory, artistic, and industrial design are blurred, reflecting a unique synergy that defines Danish design, says Anders Kongskov and Kristian Kastoft, co-founders of Copenhagen Design Agency and co-directors of the project.
For this year’s exhibition, the new curator, Danish designer Maria Bruun, delved even deeper into the dual nature of Danish design.
— The artistic and the functional coexist, she says, inspiring both creators, the industry, and audiences alike.
The ten participating designers and studios — Akiko Ken Made, Alexander Kirkeby, Frederik Gustav, Lærke Ryom, Marie Holst, Morten Løbner Espersen, Sigurd Nis Schelde, Sofie Østerby, Stine Mikkelsen, and Victor Miklos Andersen — have each brought objects in a range of materials and techniques. Many of them have utilised new technology to create expressive aesthetic outcomes, combined with honest materiality and transparency in production, and all of them express the importance of preserving local craft traditions.
— The projects presented become specific instead of generic, and I think that is also something we experience now during this time; designers are interested in finding their specific language of form or their specific approach to experimentation, says Maria Bruun, continuing,
— There could be a lot of opinions about why we need to know each designer’s subjective approach — why are we not creating functionality and more general design? But in my opinion – in my curation, I think that good design starts here, with the designers’ ambition and their subjective eye towards what design and craft could look like 20 years from now.
The ten selected designers and studios are now on display in a digital exhibition as well as a physical one in an immersive exhibition by Maria Bruun in Kvadrat’s Copenhagen showroom (until October 25).
