DDW // Digital Trend Tour
Welcome to our digital trend tour. We are students from the study course of International Lifestyle studies, and we are going to present several signals related to three trends that we spotted in the past five weeks. Let’s first explain what a trend is. A trend is a shift in values and needs driven by forces which happen among certain groups in the society. What we do as trend researchers, we look into society and research why consumers purchase certain products and behave in certain ways. Our aim is to understand and predict how the future will be, according to people’ lifestyles and current developments within society.
Ok, so let’s dive into it and if you have any questions, leave a comment below, and we will be happy to answer.
The first trend we are going to present is called ‘Spice up the clean up’. Here is a short description of it
SPICE UP THE CLEAN-UP
There is a shift in making the world a little better while focusing on small local and often unseen issues. These problems consist of hidden trash-ures, which are materials that generally wouldn’t be recycled or found in the first place. New possibilities and purposes are being explored to ensure the non-recycled materials are being re-used.
Inspirational initiatives are being undertaken to make sure the locality of the trash plays a role in this whole process. So this trend focuses on bringing back the local area to a clean environment and exploring new ways to tackle the unseen local problems.
We will show you the three manifestations that fit with the trend "spice up the Clean-up".
Recabinate Designers: Tomas Linssen and Jana Flohr The signal relates to the trend spice up the clean up because it is about reusing old metal filing cabinets that will not be used anymore and will be discarded.
The cabinets are spacious enough to store our belongings both in household and work environment. The designers added wooden details and support to make it more attractive and treasurable. They aim to turn them into a useful cupboard and storage furniture.
Thus, the cabinets are hidden treasures of the local industrials sites because they have been and will be standing there forever and not used properly.
The second signal is called Urban Terrazzo.
Urban terrazzo Designers: Luisa Rubisch & Rasa Weber
Urban Terrazzo is an innovative material made from the waste of demolished houses. Housing materials are hard to recycle, and that is why most of it ends up on the landfill. Urban Terrazzo wanted to tackle this problem by using local waste and use that to create new building materials that represent the area where they have been found. This signal fits our trend Spice Up the Clean up because it’s about local waste that is overlooked because they mostly end up on local dump sites.
The third one is called BlueRoof.
BlueRoof Designers: Jelle Scharff and Bas van der Leeden This signal fits the trend spice up the clean up because it’s about using unseen waste found in the sewers from toilet waste to produce new products.
During the process of purifying water, a lot of waste is produced, but not a lot of people know about it. The process itself starts by filtering toilet waste. Instead of burning it the company what's to grind it, clean it and transform into a substrate on the roof for a plant to grow.
Therefore, instead of throwing it away, these designers decided to recycle it and turn it into new material used as a substrate for green roofs. The inspiring thing is that you would never think to use local toilet waste to produce such an unseen solution to polluted environments.
And the last one is called TabakLab.
TabakLab
Designer: Lisette Keyser
Tabak lab is a service that educates youngsters on cigarettes, using cigarettes. The lab visits local schools.
Lisette Keyser created this concept to address this problem that a lot of youngsters do not know what the cigarettes are made of. During the workshop, they create ink out of the ash of cigarettes. They also stain textiles with a residue of the cigarettes. By doing that everyone is analysing what is inside of the cigarettes.
Even though the purpose was not to find meaning in the hidden treasures, which are the cigarettes. She is using them in a way that creates a service out of the ash of the cigarettes, trash that normally would not be re-used.
The second trend we are going to present is called ‘Peaceful Escape’. Here you can read a little bit more about it.
THE PEACEFUL ESCAPE
In the current society, we are expected to continually have large amounts of work and study in combination with more and more responsibilities. By putting the weight of being perfect on our back, we often feel anxious and depressed. We are living in a stressed society where peer pressure and prejudices push us to behave in a way
that we would not usually do. We are losing our freedom of choice because our will is always distorted and influenced by others’ behaviour. These motifs bring people the desire to escape where no stress and duties exist and to come back as better selves.
The first signal that we spotted at the Dutch Design week in the Klockgebouw, which is related to this trend is the Loungescape Powernap.
Ahrend Loungescape powernap
Designer: Basten Leijh
In these days people suffer from burnouts and depressions and often seek for a way to escape. Escaping the society could be done with the Loungescape Powernap. This product connects with the Peaceful Escape trend because it enables you to relax and increase productivity without having to travel far.
Studies have proven that employees are more relaxed, productive and concentrated after a rest. The Loungescape Powernap central element is the whole-body-vibration mattress,which functions in 3 different modes. To relax there is a low vibration that your muscles to relax, combined with soothing music. Activate mode increase your dopamine level, resulting in higher productivity. Lastly, the Recover mode is a combination of both Relax and Activate mode which fully recharges you for work. This product relates to the Peaceful Escape trend because it releases work stress and enables users to escape from pressures.