Workmates brings Good News at Salone del Mobile 2015

This year during Milan Furniture Fair, Dutch design collective Workmates will distribute Good News, a newspaper put together by the five members, celebrating the ideas and processes behind their work.

The open collective – currently Roos Meerman, Joris De Groot, Rick Tegelaar, Klaas Kuiken and Casper Tolhuisen – work independently of each other, and across subject areas. But all of the designers share a hands-on approach, practice in a workshop environment, and produce work that is experimental with a strong focus on process.

Not intent on simply designing a product, the Workmates prefer to build their own machines or hack a factory’s manufacturing processes to develop new techniques, or test the potential of a material. Good News will take visitors into the workshops of the designers to show what happens behind-the-scenes. “Instead of using space in Milan to show finished products, we’re using space for our ideas,” they explain. “We wanted to show the world behind the work that you don’t usually see – so this is what we’re taking to Milan.”

The papers will be available from a central hub and distributed throughout Milan Furniture Fair on branded trolleys, by couriers dressed in custom-made Workmates suits by Dutch menswear designer Sjaak Hullekes.

Inside the Good News paper you will find interviews with members of the group, an essay by Dutch author Ed van Hinte, a feature on industry in Arnhem, and photo essays documenting elements of the Workmates’ processes – among many other stories on the design practice and daily life a of the collective.

All graduates of the ArtEZ School of Arts, the Workmates collective was established in 2013 to give an identity to designers based in Arnhem, working in a process-driven way. An open collective, the group grows and changes in an organic fashion. At present, most members of the collective work in studios at a high-tech industrial compound in Arnhem, where designers are welcomed and the crossover of design and heavy industry encouraged. During Salone del Mobile you can follow the workmates on their web app on:
www.workmatespresents.com

WORKMATES Good News Party
and release of the newspaper
will be in collaboration with Weltevree:
Via Voghera 8
20144 Milano