Design Map · Eindhoven
Open Works
Graduation project by Emma Itria at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
‘Open Works’ is a proposal for a student initiative that addresses the growing tension between increasingly collaborative design practices and the rigid infrastructures that continue to privilege individual authorship and modernist constructs. Developed through interviews, theoretical research and weekly gatherings, the project proposes a collective framework for students and the public to co-create and host longer programmes and shorter activities. This flexible approach to authorship is supported by furniture borrowed from and based on the OpenStructures system, with objects and furniture that participants can continually reassemble and reconfigure. Activated through collective making and discussion, the proposal and its installation remain unfinished by design, adapting to changing needs instead of prescribing fixed uses. By treating institutional infrastructure as a material rather than a rigid structure, ‘Open Works’ argues that the future of design lies not only in new forms of practice but also in creating shared systems for their encounter.