Step by step toward a permanent designroute
The Roundabout design route is a concept developed from the brand strategy and the new city vision of Eindhoven, city marketing organization Eindhoven247 and is co-financed by the city entrepreneurs. SOEPS Creative Collective is the creative partner as well as the executor of the concept. The result should provide a clear profile of the city in order to invite visitors to come to Eindhoven to gain inspiration during 52 weeks a year. E52 asked SOEPS to write down the story behind Roundabout.
To inspire visitors, Eindhoven will get a permanent design route throughout the city center. This "Roundabout Design" will eventually be a link between design-oriented institutions such as TAC, the Design Academy, Philips Museum, Kazerne, van Abbe museum, DesignHuis, Schellensfabriek, and the NRE and VDMA areas. Eindhoven Brand Store next to Eindhoven central station is acting as the start and the end of the tour. DDW 2016 acts as the kick-off of this process and it can be seen as the prelude to DDW 2017. Therefore this Roundabout design route will be fully exposed at the national theme year "From Mondriaan to Dutch Design”.
The current position, the ambition and future growth of Eindhoven will more and more strengthen Eindhoven as a complete city and the heart of the Brainport region. Eindhoven is bursting with energy and full of design and technology. We play at world level, but the funny thing is that this is not visible to the visitors of the city. It is mostly hidden behind windows and walls, where a lot of hard work is going on based on full collaboration to achieve new big innovations. Eindhoven is a fascinating and unconventional city. In spite of the High Tech Campus, Sectie-C, Strijp-S and the TU/e being fully on track, it is difficult to discover the real heart of the city in the center. Culture, art and design are not visible in the streets, the post-war architecture wins no prizes, nor does it shows who we really are as a city. Except for that one Dutch Design Week each year, when everything and everyone comes out in the open to show the true character of Eindhoven.
Retail and Hospitality
The themes of design, technology and knowledge (TDK) have been ‘branded tools’ for Eindhoven for years now, and it proved that this brand can convey a lot of power to give a collective boost to the city. Our idea is to profile TDK further, strengthening it by exposing both design and technology more intensively. On top of that, we work together with the acquisitionteam of the townhall in order to stimulate retailers, hotels, restaurants, bars and cultural institutions to embrace design in their social exposure. In addition, technology has to be seen and felt everywhere in the city whenever it is or can be made relevant. During the DDW three retail and hospitality companies, supported by SOEPS and students of the Design Academy, will perform a design experiment in their businesses.
Metrosystem of storylines
Besides the Roundabout Design route, other city storylines will become visible. If you make a projection of the routes on a map of Eindhoven, the storylines look like a subway map. That feeds the ambition and that’s what we like it to do. There is also a Roundabout Philips (from Philips Museum till Strijp-R), a Roundabout DAF, a Roundabout Tech, or even a Roundabout Industrial Revolution. Physical interventions in the public space as icons of the past, the present and the future.
Bright Talents
As the first stage of the design route we selected an interesting combination of existing and new design objects. The gems in the city are connected to it, so we have immediately created a valuable route. From this phase on, we will continue to add new interesting ideas and objects. We work on a plan to invite international 'Bright Talents' to Eindhoven to start discussions and working together under supervision of renownevd designers, tech entrepreneurs and startups. In this way new objects and experiments can emerge in the inner city. The whole project will be entirely executed in Eindhoven tradition, based on co-creation between established designers and all the international bright talents we like to see coming to the city. Just imagine: Areas in the center such as VDMA or NRE as creative hotspots where a public presentation will be held once every week. That’s the energy we want and the mentality we all need. In the meantime we are building up a strong network of new ambassadors and so we can win the ‘war on talents’ in an unconventional way.
7-9 mentality
The Roundabout concept will clearly contribute to the implementation of the municipal policy for a more attractive Eindhoven downtown. In order to achieve the best results we have to combine and facilitate strong ideas and initiatives, events and ambitions in the city and make smart connections between them. Let us move away from the status quo and score a 9 instead of a 7. Everyone in control should, even must participate to this.
SOEPS collaborates. At beautiful things. Takes up challenges and comes up with solutions which produce results. Solutions of which we are convinced that they are good for the city and the province, but best for the people who live and work there. Combined thinking from concept to marketing, from underground to citymarketing. Leading to new movements. Moving in the right direction. Thus the city and her residents becomes alive, and ambitions can be realized.
Out-of-office
Soeps has now settled down on a beautiful spot in the city: on De Heuvel, next to the exit at the Vestdijk. We have named it “Out-of-office”. That underlines our mentality not to feel locked up, but open in order to tackle the project beyond the standard office position. From the DDW we have prepared a show-case of all projects which we want to see implemented in the city. Here we can experiment, roll-out plans and invite people to think about the future of the city. You are invited!
Roundabout Design Eindhoven
Heuvel 95/exit Vestdijk
5611 DK Eindhoven
+31624844400