The plastic crush of four talented young designers

Four young designers were invited to make a design for the Plastic Crush exhibition. They took their inspiration from objects - from the pre-plastic age – in the collection and reflect on the impact plastic has on our society.

Trash or art

In Plastic Crush you can see objects from the collection, contemporary art and plastic icons. Plastic literally conquered the world. But the dream that plastic would make the world a better place has made way for the fear that the world will be flooded by plastic waste.

Natural versus Synthetic

Daria Biryukova made eight works of art with eight colours, both synthetic and natural.

Her inspiration for this was a set of synthetic colours from 1983 which had been used to colour shadow puppets for a Karagöz theatre in Turkey.

Natural dyes are being replaced by synthetic dyes and recipes for natural dyes are gradually being forgotten.

This makes it more and more difficult to discover the original meaning of a colouring process.

A carrying basket with a water bottle and a bamboo telephone from Indonesia

Jie Chen chose objects from the collection that reflect her own designs: designs that communicate.

Lena Winterink designed a coat comprising nothing but ‘Made in’ labels of cast-off clothes