Next to the permanent exhibition in its Schaudepot by Herzog & de Meuron and the great retrospective dedicated to Viktor Papanek, the Vitra Design Museum will host “Beyond the surface”, Christien Meindertsma’s first solo presentation outside Netherlands, her native country, until January 20, 2019.

Born in Utrecht in 1980 and graduated at the Eindhoven Design Academy in 2003, Meindertsma has already won three Dutch Design Awards (2008) and a Future Award (2016) for the high value of her research on sources and materials. Rather than on finished products, her work focuses on the study of resources, raw materials and production processes in order to understand the origin of objects that surround us. A unique, critical, approach that overcomes the personal investigations to understand the connotations of an inquiry. How do you define transparency? What are the effects of globalized production chains? What is the value of local production? How does commodity trading work?

Christien Meinderstma responds with her “documentary design”, that is design not as a result but as research and refutation method. “Internet tells us that it has an answer for everything” says the designer “but how can you know the truth if you do not verify by yourself?” So she undertakes expeditions to factories and she conducts meticulous detective work to check out every single step in the supply chain, from the commodity to the completed product.

Through prototypes, pictures, videos and interviews, “Beyond the surfaces” tells the story of this approach, that is useful to develop an interest in the origin, processing and sustainability of what we buy as critical consumers.