Trapped in Suburbia makes designs with a lot of attention to interaction. We tell the stories of our clients and involve their audience. Involvement creates understanding and sincere, but above all unforgettable. In this way we transform your story into an experience and your audience into loyal fans.

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I’ll may remember, involve me and I’ll understand”

The Ghosts of Sunday Morning

Design Museum Den Bosch together with guest curator Glenn Adamson are paying tribute to the expert advisers at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC, now known as Sundaymorning@ekwc) with the exhibition The Ghosts of Sunday Morning. For fifty years now, the EKWC has brought together knowledge, design and imagination in the field of ceramics. Thirty key works from the EKWC’s history have been reinterpreted and executed in white clay, creating an exceptionally beautiful and ghostly spectacle, in which past and present overlap.

The ghostly white pieces are displayed on perspex stands filled with slowly moving clouds of smoke. As visitors move around the exhibition, the stands slowly light up, and the experience is completed by an enigmatic soundscape formed by the delicately tinkling sound of clay cooling down after firing in the kiln.

VPRO Annual Review

The theme of this VPRO annual review 2019 is Future Builders. Shaping and wanting to help build the future is a fixed value in the stories and programs of the VPRO. During the Dutch Design Week, VPRO already collected future questions from the public. Questions that VPRO should work with, whether for research or otherwise. It yielded them many hundreds of responses, written on large colored cards.

These cards were the inspiration for the design of the annual overview. Not a bound book, but a stubborn box with loose cards. With a bit of a nod to the old-fashioned videotape. The first card is a blank card for members to send their own future question to the VPRO.

Talking Ceramics 1


The kiln, the ceramicist’s oven, plays a major role in the ceramic process. Ceramicists can spend weeks creating their object yet when it is placed into the kiln all control is taken out of their hands. Even the most proficient ceramicist on opening the kiln after firing cannot predict the outcome – it could be perfection or disaster.

To experience this excitement, anxiety and surprise, the reader must literally bake the white book in an oven – watch and wait – all is revealed as the heat transforms the cover and reveals the design.

Taking Ceramics I discusses the topic of mistakes with several past artists-in-residence from the European Centre of Ceramics’ (EKWC) . Playing with the subject, the book’s layout emphasises fragility, splitting content over pages and positioning it precariously close to the edges.

The special edition furthers this theme with its 1mm thick porcelain cover. Inevitably, whether through the sheer weight of other books or mishandling the cover will crack. The reader, like the ceramicist, learns to accept and appreciate the beauty of mistakes.

 

Trapped in Suburbia award

Gold | 2017 European Design Awards
Bronze | 2017 European Design Awards
Nomination | 2017 ADCN Awards

Risk of Explosion!

The attack on the Amsterdam Registry Office, 1943.

The exhibition in the Resistance Museum focuses on the social-psychological aspects of this spectacular act, which took place 75 years ago. The visitors can sympathise with the considerations and discussions of the six artists and gain insight into their backgrounds, motives, how they proceeded and what ultimately went wrong.

The exhibition consists of 12 rooms that you have to visit one by one. Because of the 3D audio tour and the beautiful illustrations and animations on walls and ceilings you have the feeling that you are in the mids of the story. Gradually there is no way back and you experience the same dilemmas as the attackers. You can decide on these dilemmas through an interactive component in the exhibition.

Trapped in Suburbia award

Silver | European Design Awards

Arita Ceramics Symposium

The Arita Ceramics Symposium was held in November 2016 in Arita in Japan. Arita ware is one of Japans most famous ceramics and rich in tradition. This book is the transcript of the symposium and is a gift for the speakers and organizers. During the 2 days lots of valuable information on ceramics is shared between different cultures and this is not be be lost.

The brief was to design a book that shows the full transcript of the symposium in both English and Japanese and turn this into something special and a collectors item.

The essence of the symposium is Ceramics. Therefore we chose to have a ceramic platter on the cover of the book. On the front cover the is the image of the ceramic platter, this represents the talking about ceramics. And on the back we have a 3D moulded Arita ware platter, which represents the actual making of the ceramics. This also makes the book float when you lay it on the table and keeps the big wiro- spine elevated.

The inside contains different grams of paper from 300 grams on the outsides it slowly transforms from 280, 260, etc into lighter paper 80 grams on the heart of the book. The represents the different possibilities of ceramics. It can be really thick and strong, but also fragile and transparent.

Because of almost 400 pages there was no wire-o available to bind the book and this had to be custom made by hand by the binder. This book is the first of it’s kind with such a big wire-o.
All the above and the run of just 35 copies makes the book a unique design and a collectors item.

 


Trapped in Suburbia award

Silver | European Design Awards

Seriously Funny

Sharp, groundbreaking or lighthearted? What are you allowed to joke about in satire? Where is the limit of the joke? In the exhibition Seriously Funny at the Institute of Sound and Vision, you will discover how satire makes you laugh, while exposing serious subjects, and why satire is so important.

Satire also gives a bit of friction. And Seriously Funny does not only gives friction figuratively but also literally because the walls are made of sandpaper. Through interactive elements and viewing fragments, objects and cartoons, the visitor discovers where his own satire boundaries lie. There are stools that turn out to be weighing scales, video screens that require you to put your head in a trash can, you can record your own satirical speech from the throne, test how quickly you are stepped on your toes, what your aftertaste is on this exhibition and your neatly completed visitor survey immediately get passed through the shredder. Let’s see what your sense of humor is about 😉

Additional photos by Jorrit Lousberg